This Is America’s Biggest Financial Fear
More than 60 percent of Americans are losing sleep at night because of financial concerns, and the biggest concern is that they’re not saving enough for retirement, according to a new report from CreditCards.com.
The second-biggest worry is about the cost of education, with half of those between the ages of 18 and 29 saying that concern keeps them up at night.
The percentage of Americans worried about education costs has been growing for the past eight years and is the only category that has become a bigger problem since the Great Recession. “Unless something slows the rapid rise in college costs, this could soon be Americans’ biggest financial fear,” CreditCards.com senior analyst Matt Schultz said in a statement.
Related: 12 Smart Money Moves Millennials Should Make Right Now
That echoes a Gallup poll released in April, which found that 73 percent of parents with kids under age 18 ranked paying for college as a financial worry, more than were concerned about saving for retirement or covering medical expenses.
Nearly one in three Americans are losing sleep because of medical bills, 27 percent are worried about their mortgage or rent payment, and 21 percent fret over credit card debt.
Older Americans and those with higher incomes seem to have fewer financial anxieties than younger generations. Less than half of those age 65 or older are losing sleep over their finances, versus more than two thirds of adults 64 or younger. Of those making less than $75,000 per year, 69 percent had financial worries, compared to just 51 percent of those making more than $75,000.
Stat of the Day: 0.2%
The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley tweets: “In order to raise enough revenue to start paying down the debt, Trump would need tariffs to be ~4% of GDP. They're currently 0.2%.”
Read Tankersley’s full breakdown of why tariffs won’t come close to eliminating the deficit or paying down the national debt here.
Number of the Day: 44%
The “short-term” health plans the Trump administration is promoting as low-cost alternatives to Obamacare aren’t bound by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to spend a substantial majority of their premium revenues on medical care. UnitedHealth is the largest seller of short-term plans, according to Axios, which provided this interesting detail on just how profitable this type of insurance can be: “United’s short-term plans paid out 44% of their premium revenues last year for medical care. ACA plans have to pay out at least 80%.”
Number of the Day: 4,229
The Washington Post’s Fact Checkers on Wednesday updated their database of false and misleading claims made by President Trump: “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.”
The tally, which works out to an average of almost 7.6 false or misleading claims a day, includes 432 problematics statements on trade and 336 claims on taxes. “Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history,” the Post says.
Number of the Day: $3 Billion
A new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Medicare’s prescription drug program could have saved almost $3 billion in 2016 if pharmacies dispensed generic drugs instead of their brand-name counterparts, Axios reports. “But the savings total is inflated a bit, which HHS admits, because it doesn’t include rebates that brand-name drug makers give to [pharmacy benefit managers] and health plans — and PBMs are known to play games with generic drugs to juice their profits.”
Chart of the Day: Public Spending on Job Programs
President Trump announced on Thursday the creation of a National Council for the American Worker, charged with developing “a national strategy for training and retraining workers for high-demand industries,” his daughter Ivanka wrote in The Wall Street Journal. A report from the president’s National Council on Economic Advisers earlier this week made it clear that the U.S. currently spends less public money on job programs than many other developed countries.
