
Hand-to-mouth living from a credit card company perspective - eduardordm
http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/5/10/hand-to-mouth-living-from-a
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Zenst
Many people who live payday to payday will be the types of people who if they
had there pay doubled would adjust into the same payday to payday model.

In general these will be young people who are out to enjoy life and whilst
many adapt a more moderate balance lifestyle, there are always some who carry
on.

Certainly with the lack of incentives for savers, this certainly does not help
motivate people and why should it.

What I would be interested in is a graph of fiscal behavour done per age
groups and fiscal income. Also if they are single or married or have children.
Then I believe you would see a more measurable trend.

Though it is worth bearing in mind credit card companies prefer people who
live like this as they make them more money than not and with that is it a
testiment to how well credit card marketing is actioned I do wonder.

~~~
kyllo
Considering that the top 1% earners captured 121% of all income gains during
2009-2011 (yes, 121%, that means the other 99% of people's income went
down)[1] it's also possible that many of these people _used_ to be able to
save money every month and not live hand-to-mouth before the recession and the
sorry-excuse-for-a-recovery, but that their declining real incomes have
squeezed their savings margins down to nothing.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/top-one-percent-
inc...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/top-one-percent-income-
gains_n_2670455.html)

~~~
fennecfoxen
Your statistic is shockingly meaningless. 2009 was the bottom of a recession
and a stock market crash. By 2011 it recovered. If you look at an equivalent
measure from 2007-2009, you'd see a negative number.

The top 1% of earners make most of their money due to the stock market and
related activity __by design __, because if you're a shareholder in Coca-Cola,
you want a CEO who actually cares about making Coca-Cola profitable over the
long term, rather than someone who would collect a pretty salary for a few
years and then retire to a life of leisure. You do that with equity
compensation, stock options that vest over time - and, since satisfaction with
money is logarithmic, you're going to need a lot of them.

Now, the overall level of justice achieved by this current system (or lack
thereof) is in fact a valid topic of discussion, though largely outside the
scope of the post I make here. By contrast, this cherry-picked number you
present INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST.

I call on you to be ashamed of yourself. Unprincipled yellow journalism of
this nature is bad enough in the wild, but HERE of all places we ought to
value REAL information and understanding, not rhetoric and obfuscation.
(Alternatively, please abandon Engineering and seek employment in the
scummiest Marketing department you can find.)

~~~
agent00f
It's unclear the reasoning behind this assertion that a CEO needs stock
compensation to do good work.

Frankly if someone isn't professional enough to do their job without some
cartoon carrot hanging in their face, I'm not sure how they would be suitable
for a top position in the first place over those who apparently are. \-- It's
also worth mentioning that there's little contention over the fact that
salaries and wealth at the top of the pyramid are rising faster than the norm.
The majority of GDP growth for quite a while has been going to the upper
crust. I suggest reading the following if this isn't yet evident:

<http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html>

~~~
nthj
> Frankly if someone isn't professional enough to do their job without some
> cartoon carrot hanging in their face

As the Joker said in the Dark Knight, when you're good at something,

never do it for free.

------
jonnathanson
Paycheck timing is nothing new in the retail business, and it's used by
virtually all of the big retailers to roll out promotions, product refreshes,
new lines, etc.

Traditionally speaking, paycheck timing was used by retailers catering to low-
income segments -- especially those on food stamps, and those who buy
groceries on extremely predictable cycles (by necessity). But what's
interesting, not to mention troubling, is that this trend is proliferating up
the socioeconomic ladder. It's been going on for awhile now, dating back to
before the 2007/8 crash, though certainly made a lot worse ever since that
downturn.

~~~
r00fus
Can you give me an example other than say, post Apr 15th sales/promotions to
get tax rebate money?

~~~
jonnathanson
Retailers segment their customers' trips to the store in much the same way a
tech company segments use cases. So-called "stock-up trips," typically
conducted after the first payday of each month, are when customers go to the
stores to -- as the name implies -- stock up on groceries and supplies for the
coming two weeks. "Fill-in" trips are ad hoc trips to grab specific items or
meet needs that have emerged since the stock-up trip. A second stock-up trip
typically happens around the second payday of the month. And so forth.

Shopping behavior -- particularly shopping behavior among segments of the
population living paycheck to paycheck -- follows very predictable patterns
like these, often by necessity.

Now, let's put this into practice. I'm managing a regional grocery chain.
Let's say it's Kroger in the Midwest. I want to win customers' share of wallet
on the payday stock-up trip, so they'll go to my store instead of a
competitor's (let's call that competitor Meijer). I'll time my sale
accordingly on key items (often these are "price indicator" items that signal
price superiority over other competitors in the area). Meijer will be timing
its sale the same way, and so a lot of game theory and competitive intel will
come into play here. But this is why grocery items and household necessities
are cheaper at these big chains two weeks out of the month.

------
ams6110
_Most people that spend their full salary do never put more than 20$ of gas at
a time. At the end, they spend around the same amount than others, but they
seem to prefer to go the gas station many times instead of just filling up the
tank._

When gas prices are volatile this actually makes sense. It's the same
principle as "dollar cost averaging" when you buy stocks. Purchase a fixed
dollar amount, and you end up buying more when the price is low, and less when
the price is high, which is what you want to do. Therefore when I buy gas I
stop at $25 unless I have a coupon or I'm somwhere that prices are
significantly lower than where i normally buy (prices vary by $0.50--$0.75/gal
within a 50 mile radius).

~~~
coldtea
That would a case of people doing this to counter volatile prices if people
also took advantage of the quite low gas prices they chance upon to fill it
their car up completely.

But what the article says is that they don't put more the $20 at a time,
period.

Such a behavior wouldn't see any advantage given volatile prices, because in
the end you end up paying the same (you pay lower at some times, higher at
other).

Which is the article points too: that they see the guys doing that end up
paying the same amounts as the guys filling it up normally.

So it's not the volatile prices that get people doing that, it's perhaps a
false idea of saving money, or that they infact do not have that much lying
around and try to get to the end of week accounting for any emergency.

~~~
a3n
I've been there, and that was the case for me. You just don't commit resources
to a full tank of gas, you never know what might come up. Sucks.

