this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 62 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Stories like this are why I have no hope for the future, at least here in the US.

My eighty year-old parents are driving for DoorDash (in my car) and that's all the income they have to live on. If they hadn't paid off their mortgage years ago they'd be homeless.

[–] return2ozma@lemmy.world 33 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ever wonder what it was like to live in Rome during the collapse?

[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 2 points 3 months ago

I imagine it was hot.

[–] seaQueue@lemmy.world 56 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Averages really obfuscate the story here. A ~$6300 average could mean 6 people carrying $6300 balances or five carrying no balance and one dude carrying $30k+. I'd love to see the distribution here because leaning on credit for necessities is what people do when they're falling out of the middle class.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ironically a similar thing is marriage. The statistic which is like "1/3 marriages end in divorce" are because of the same person marrying like 3 or 4 times. It's quite a bit (albeit not massively) lower if you only factor in the first marriage

[–] cannibalkitteh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 3 months ago

Credit card debt Georg has over 10 million dollars in credit card debt and is an outlier and should not have been counted.

[–] Boozilla@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Agree. Weighted arithmetic mean would help. And/or breaking it up by net worth or income.

The article does link to a longer transunion report with more quarterly detail.

[–] curiousaur@reddthat.com 2 points 3 months ago

There are some other legitimate reasons to put tons in credit too. I built an ADU on my property. Asked the bank for a loan to build it, a second mortgage. They said no, there's not enough equity. (I'd just bought the house a year prior). I explained that the value of the property will go up by more than the amount of the loan I'm asking. Of course they told me they can't give loans based on hypothetical future appraisals. So they advised me to put it all on credit. I had a line of 30k with them after all and that's the exact amount I'd asked for.

So we did. Maxed out the card to build the ADU, got the property reappraised, then got the second mortgage, then used that to pay off the credit card debt, now renting out the ADU for $200 more per month than the loan payment. It all worked out and made perfect sense, but I carried 30k of cc debt for like 4 months while this all went down.

[–] MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 42 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It took 40-some years but I'm finally above average in something 😎

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I thought I was starting to do better on my debts, got a notice from the IRS yesterday saying I missed a 1099c in my 2022 taxes that dictated I owe them 1,600 dollars. Not sure how that could be true, I remember I had paid a few hundred that year, so I'm not sure what went wrong. Not looking forward to figuring it out.

[–] MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

Sir, you paid more than many billionaires in 2022, and I know you can't afford food right now, but we are going to need you to pay us $1,600 more. Oh and um, add a couple more years before you'll receive the money you paid towards social security.

[–] callouscomic@lemm.ee 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Nobody goes to prison for most errors. The IRS is made up of average normal every day people trying to do a job. Thry clearly jnderstand people make mistakes. Explain the error, they'll work with you.

What gets people in trouble is intent. If you intended or intend to do wrong, okay, that's an issue. But otherwise, stop spreading fear.

[–] Madison420@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Just an fyi resend and that number usually goes away. They did the same thing to me for the same year and when questioned they said they just never got the paperwork. Resent and everything was fine.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Unfortunately its mail from the IRS

[–] viking@infosec.pub 25 points 3 months ago

In the US.

That's quite an important fact.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 22 points 3 months ago

What’s the median? Average could just be my neighbor Steve.

[–] BlackLaZoR@kbin.run 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Average consumer

Average US consumer.

Also feel free to add public debt per capita into this - it will be paid from the future taxes after all

[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah there's absolutely a bunch of rich people carrying over 50k credit card debt they don't even care about that are throwing this off

[–] Steve@startrek.website 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thats not how this works…

[–] MutilationWave@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

That is indeed how averages work. For example I commonly have 10k worth of credit card "debt" which is just stuff my company reimburses me for and will be paid in full on the due date. I'm skewing this average because in reality I have no debt.

There's more than one kind of average.

[–] Crisps@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

This is surprisingly low. If the average family put all their expenses on a card and pays it off every month it won’t be far off this.

What is the average amount that people are actually paying interest on?