Americans are mad. They feel like they’re getting ripped off all the time — I’ve made a career chronicling this — but I don’t think they are quite sure who to be mad at. There’s a long list of culprits, but here’s one that’s often overlooked. Even people with good [Keep reading]
Two-thirds of all jobs in the country are low-paying at less than $20 an hour or $40,000 a year About 43% of households, or about 51 million, don’t earn enough to cover the basics. Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, or ALICE, is a worrisome group for America What’s the minimum amount of money you [Keep reading]
It’s an age-old question: Is life harder or easier for today’s young people? Well, score a “win” for the millennials. Younger adults are spending a stunning amount of money on rent — $93,000 by age 30, according to a new study. More important, rent sucks up about 45% of their [Keep reading]
If you think fake news is bad, wait until fake news video becomes a thing. Or until an entire generation of kids hacked by Silicon Valley’s attention-mining tools comes of age. Or until Facebook throws up its hands and realizes it simply can’t stop the Frankenstein it has created. We’re [Keep reading]
One of the themes of my Restless Project is that American consumers today are subject to major forces they can neither see, nor understand, nor plan for, and that’s a great source of day-to-day anxiety. Examples are all around us. Here’s one: Pew recently found that 46 percent of Americans [Keep reading]
Is renting (a home) the new buying? Single-family rentals—either detached homes or townhomes—are developing faster than any other portion of the housing market. These rentals outpace both single-family home purchases and apartment-style living, according to the Urban Institute. “Almost all the housing demand in recent years has been filled by [Keep reading]
It’s no secret that young people are getting married and starting families later in life than their parents did. It is, however, a bit of a secret where they are choosing to settle down. Big cities and their big employers have always attracted young workers, and that’s still true. But [Keep reading]
It’s Labor Day. I hope you aren’t working this weekend. Far too many Americans will be. And thanks to a court decision this week, millions of them will continue to work over, for free. Before the court ruling, and what the Trump administration might do about it, let’s talk about [Keep reading]
The latest sign that America is a youth-obsessed culture? Men as young as their 30s have taken to “getting work done” so they don’t “age out of” their workplaces and careers. I wrote about this for CNBC.com recently. Ageism is one of the factors contributing to Americans’ general anxiety about [Keep reading]
“There’s always something.” Heather Young, who my readers my might remember, spends a lot of her time thinking about money. She runs an online group designed to help women get their spending under control (The Frugal Females Challenge). But even for Heather, life happens. There’s weddings, bachelorette parties, and … [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan