According to a report, 62% of people in the US live from paycheck to paycheck.
As of February, 62 percent of Americans, including 48 percent of consumers with high incomes, lived paycheck to paycheck, according to a study by PYMNTS along with LendingClub, a peer-to-peer finance platform.
Even though inflation is lower now than it was in July, the report pointed out that consumers must still deal with increasing prices.
According to the study, “consumers are already taking steps to deal with the rising cost of living, such as cutting back on discretionary spending. The data from PYMNTS shows that consumers are finding alternative ways to deal with their lower buying power, but one can only cut back on spending so much.”
The report noted that for some individuals, “supplemental income could be the key” and that in addition to 17% of consumers who had other sources of supplemental income, around a quarter of consumers had a side job.
According to the study, 39 percent of people who reported “having trouble paying their bills” and living paycheck to paycheck cited “extraordinary expenses” as the reason they were looking for side jobs.
In the past 90 days, supplemental revenue as a percentage of total income increased, according to 55% of respondents.
From February 7 to February 23, 4,125 American consumers were surveyed for the study, which also took other sources of economic statistics into account.
According to a LendingClub news release from February, two percent fewer consumers—60%—were living paycheck to paycheck in January than they were in February.
The news release also mentioned statistics on credit card balances, showing that the typical consumer owes 35 percent of their savings on credit cards.
Nevertheless, this number varied between consumer categories. Those who said they were living paycheck to paycheck but had no trouble paying their bills had credit card balances equal to 62% of their savings, while those who said they were struggling to pay their bills had credit card debt that was more than 50% higher than their available savings.
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