In the US, per BLS, the bottom 20% of earners spend more than they earn on basic necessities: housing, feed, healthcare, transportation. The next 20% barely managed to cover them, without much left over.
This is why I liked Thomas Piketty's definition of the "middle class" being income earners in the 50th to 90th percentiles: enough to pay for life's necessities, with some left over for niceties (but not so much as get into the situation of having piles of money earning interest on interest).
See Nick Maggiulli's "The Biggest Lie in Personal Finance":
> All the expense tracking and goal setting in the world cannot make up for an insufficient balance.
* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-biggest-lie-in-personal-fin...
In the US, per BLS, the bottom 20% of earners spend more than they earn on basic necessities: housing, feed, healthcare, transportation. The next 20% barely managed to cover them, without much left over.
This is why I liked Thomas Piketty's definition of the "middle class" being income earners in the 50th to 90th percentiles: enough to pay for life's necessities, with some left over for niceties (but not so much as get into the situation of having piles of money earning interest on interest).
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...