The Small-Business Die-Off Is Here

LOL! my title is "Go Speed Go!".
Never thought about it much, but it was just something I could choose when I originally signed up.

Now that I see it's a bit of an antiquated luxury of the past?
I'm never changing it.

 

there was a forum I belonged to that had recently changed policies to not allowing any attached images or avatar.

I used a bit of trickery to add my yellow car as an avatar, it worked about 3 months then my account was deleted in the middle of making a post.

I had to sign up all over again.


Looking at the “personal details “ page I think it would be very doable for someone to provide “what theirs looks like” in a txt file and someone else with a pc could then have the ability to edit that field and see if they can submit changes.

 

IMO that just seems like a non-compassionate, and just cold viewpoint. Aside from my opinion, -just being wrong. Again you frame what is just life for most people as being a self damning "choice" that people have made. That's not accurate.

Bravo for you, that you had the resources and the ability to have an entire years worth of funds set aside for survival. But that isn't a even a choice the majority of people could make if they wanted to do so.

The truth is a lot of people, a lot of our population live with modest to meager savings, and live on modest to meager incomes. For them saving up an entire year or mores "savings" in preparation for what is a once in a lifetime global pandemic, that has thrown the whole world into circumstance I don't think many people predicted or prepared, isn't a viable or fair, compassionate solution to offer.

I think everybody would like to say, I'd like to be able to save up a LOT of money, and have a lot of money in the bank.
Nobody really wakes up and say's to themselves, I'd rather just live paycheck to paycheck and/or not have enough for retirement.
But the reality is for a lot of people they really have no choice but to live paycheck to paycheck and budget and survive accordingly. Do they deserve less consideration in choices about how we handle this crisis than others? I say no.

It's not a matter of saying ....it's their fault..they didn't do this...or they are doing this.
It's about making the best decisions possible for the population as a whole, with the compassionate understanding that for the vast majority that means an existence that hasn't allowed for the luxury of financial resources deep enough to remain indefinitely afloat.

 

Open your eyes. Everyone makes that choice dozens of times a day. I drive to work, I work in a dangerous environment, I drive home from work. Sometimes I work on high voltage equipment, sometimes I work under a car. I climb 20 or 30 flights of steps every day. Every single one of us, at various times of the day, make a choice of what risk we're willing to take. My routine has changed almost ZERO during this entire "pandemic". The only significant difference? Social distancing.....

And yes, my 73 year old mother lives with us..she is perfectly fine and healthy, thank you, but all my grandparents are long gone. And knowing them, I doubt they would agree with what's going on right now..

I still go salvage yard hopping locally..yes, they are open, yet I haven't died.
I still go to the grocery store and my son works at a major grocery store. He's exposed to hundreds of people every day. Heck, the wife and I even go to Tropical Smoothie three or 4 times a week. We even go to drive thrus to get a bite a few times a week, and we'll either sit in the car or ..gasp...sit at an outside table and enjoy our feast. We follow decent hygiene and distancing. We're all good.

You can either live your life in a shelter, or not. You choose shelter and stress over everything, I do not...

 

OK..but you're making a big picture application based on 1 example.
It's not a lapse of personal responsibility that before this crisis maybe some people, spent some money, on nice things for themselves.
That's also not reason to pigeon hole them into some self damning definition of having chosen to be in the situation they might be in now.

We can't retrospectively apply the "wisdom" of our own frugality to others, with the punitive attitude that their decisions to perhaps buy themselves a nice kitchen, was a choice that should exclude them from compassion and consideration in decisions made today within the framework of a global pandemic.

My Grandparents were depression era survivors. When they passed away they left an interesting estate, that included immaculate appliances that were decades old, but working perfectly and maintained impeccably. They would make "big purchases" with great research, then they held onto and maintained those things, for decades. They did this I'm sure for budget savings, but maybe more just because they valued what they had. If you lived through a period of time when most people lost everything they had, then you lived the rest of your life valuing the things you did obtain.

It was kind of an inside family joke, that my Grandfather would buy a refrigerator from Sears in 1968, with a maintenance contract, then keep paying that contract and having Sears replace parts and maintain that appliance for literally decades. He definitely got his money's worth out of the service contract.

So anyway I respect frugality, and I recognize that we live in a highly consumer focused society, where a majority of goods have become considered disposable.
We don't necessarily replace for need, so much as it's just time to remodel the kitchen, because it "looks dated".

But that reality, I can't apply to policy in how we react to this virus. I won't say people have "chosen" the hardships they might be facing now.

Because the other thing my depression era Grandparents learned from the depression era was that during hard times....You help each other out. That it's not about what YOU have, or even have done. It's about the survival of our neighborhoods and communities.

 

So?
I want policy decisions to be made with compassion for as close to 100% of our population as possible.
That includes people with granite counter top kitchens, and people standing over a rented apartment counter top worrying about making next months rent.

 

I'm not seeing it on my page.

 

It's right beneath the place where you change your avatar photo...."Custom Title" or something like that.
You have to click on the Your Profile Page hyperlink and go to...............(wait for it!)................ your profile page.
I was thinking about a Rona-specific title like:
Tested and Traced.....but it's pretty obvious that some people around here are getting a little too twitchy about that......

 

Yeah, too bad everyone can't just be well off and financially insulated from hardship. That would make things so much easier. And of course if someone ISN'T well off and financially insulated from hardship, it's just of failure of their own will power and/or financial education. There couldn't possibly be a whole ocean of humanity of other reason's or extenuating circumstances. **Sarcasm**

 

How many people really live paycheck to paycheck? It varies quite widely depending on which survey entity did the asking.

That 80% rounded figure you mention seems to really be 78% from CareerBuilder.

Nielson measures about half of the folks making under $50k, one-third of those making 50-100k, and one-fourth of those making over 150k, as living paycheck to paycheck.

A First National Bank of Omaha survey found 49 to 53%, for a couple different variations of the question.

A Charles Schwab survey found 59%.

An advisory services company found 39%.

Bankrate.com found 41%

MagnifyMoney found 53%.

Pymnts.com found 59%.

American Payroll Association found 74%.

I'm going to discard that 78-80% claim as an outlier. Though it does seem to be the one that is most quoted.

 

Georgina, you won't find anyone here who is going to disapprove of your having made those good decisions for yourself. Everybody is glad you did that. And yet it seems you mention it a lot, in other threads as well as this one, and it isn't clear what your purpose is or what kind of a reaction you want.

It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that attracts "rah rah brava Georgina!" kind of sentiments. The reaction from readers in similarly secure situations is probably more like "sure, right on, good show", while readers in less secure circumstances (for whatever reason) might instead be thinking "seriously, is this the time?" I think we've probably got both groups represented here.

True enough.

Which means that's the way you've evaluated the risk:benefit in your situation. Which is what everybody (whether more or less quantitatively) is doing.

And somewhere, in between those endpoints, is something like trying to get a handle on comparative risks, and lining them up side by side to think about. This is from ten days ago:



so (counting the last ten days) you can slide that last little virus about halfway over to the next mark (1 in 100). (It's no longer leaving a mark in the dust every week or two as it was pre-distancing.)

That puts it currently at about 30 times the risk of being struck by lightning.

I think most people are cautious about lightning. They'll go indoors, reschedule golf, follow weather alerts, pay attention to where tall trees are, etc.

What decisions you make about lightning are up to you. What decisions you make about a risk 30 times that great is also up to you. Others might make them differently, and they might have their reasons for that.

Thus COVID doth make actuaries of us all.

... or, at least, gives us a leeetle bitty taste more than we had before, of what it is actuaries do all day.

(one last note ... the lightning risk is staying put on the chart)

 

Which is where I looked for it, but it is gone. It was there once since I have a custom title.

 

mine is still there