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US Workers Are Becoming More Stressed About Finances, BofA Survey Shows (reuters.com) 201

Posted by msmash from the worrying-signs dept.
U.S. workers are becoming more stressed about their rising personal debts and financial health, a Bank of America survey showed. From a report: Of the respondents polled by BofA, 47% of employed people said they had a sense of financial well-being, dropping from 52% at the start of the year. Nearly 85% of consumers carried some type of personal debt, while 26% of the workforce was seeking help in areas such as emergency savings, paying down debt, and overall financial wellness, compared with 13% in 2023, according to the May survey of more than 1,000 people working full-time.
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US Workers Are Becoming More Stressed About Finances, BofA Survey Shows More

US Workers Are Becoming More Stressed About Finances, BofA Survey Shows

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  • Wow (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, 2025 @02:55PM (#65636602)

    I’m so glad we didn’t vote for the woman who laughed.

    • Pointing out her laughter was a clever way to attack her for being a woman without directly attacking her for being a woman.

      The problem the Democrats have is they don't have anywhere to park their nepo babies. Harris's campaign was run by an incompetent nepo baby who shut down walz when he was making solid gains by calling Republicans weird.

      When Republican has a nepo baby they have tons of billionaire cash so they can just send that nepo baby off to a right-wing think tank where they can't do any ha

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )
        You miss the point. The problem they DON'T HAVE is being a felon pedo rapist who had had many businesses go bankrupt and is only out for himself. It should have been enough that they didn't have that problem that people chose to vote for them. That's good I see it from Canada anyway.
        • The way I see it from Canada is more like this, to paraphrase the choice;

          a) Lets all join hands and sing Kumbaya, or

          b) Lets burn the whole shitty system down.

          That more Americans seem to prefer b) is not really a surprise to me.
          • But they aren't burning it down. They are giving it to the wealthy and offering to enslave themselves. That's very different thing than burning it down.

            • But they aren't burning it down.

              You wouldn't know it from reading the stories here.

              They are giving it to the wealthy and offering to enslave themselves.

              Some may simply prefer it to be out in the open rather than behind closed doors like it was before.

              • How were people enslaving themselves to forced inflation before? It is tariffs causing inflation. There were no tariffs before.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          The Democrats lost because they didn't have that problem. The Republicans lost because they did have that problem.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          People get fed up of mediocrity and slow decline. The cycle goes like this:

          1. Elect mediocre centrist/centre right who seems competent.
          2. Things don't improve much for the average voter.
          3. Vote for a right wing populist who promises to fix everything.
          4. Populist breaks everything.
          5. GOTO 1.

          • The cycle is more like:

            "The economy sucks because of too much regulation, I can make it better!"
            (things seems to improve for a while, but they relax too much regulation and destroy the economy)
            (other side gets elected to clean it up, and spend years trying to fix it)
            "Remember how bad the economy was under that other side? I can fix it!"
            (and then we re-elect the party that keeps crashing the economy) ... this last time the candidate actually said "are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?". Yes, ye

      • Oh please. I voted Nikki Haley specifically to try and give someone besides Trump a chance at the Republican ticket. Then I voted against Trump again. It has nothing to do with Cackles being a woman. She was just a terrible candidate.

    • I’m so glad we didn’t vote for the woman who laughed.

      I can't speak for everyone in the survey, but while we bicker about tariffs on cheap chinese shit, it's housing costs that are killing me. Neither side of politics is going to or can do anything about this. That our homes are now our source of wealth means prices have to keep rising. Therefore the supply is artificially restricted by state and local politics. Anyone not owning a home today isn't going to in the future, and for those people rent just keeps going up.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Neither side of politics is going to or can do anything about this.

        Going to? Definitely not right now but maybe if the problem gets bad enough.

        Can do though? State mandated housing quotas for all counties are a thing in some states now for instance. They could go farther, especially in some places but they're a start. We could also put substantially higher taxes on homes purchased after the first that applies to both people and companies to prevent them from being used as investment opportunities. We could also not allow homes to be repurposed into short term rental units via services like Airbnb thus freeing up a shit ton of housing. There's plenty that we can do as long as we have the political will.

        • We could also put substantially higher taxes on homes purchased after the first that applies to both people and companies to prevent them from being used as investment opportunities.

          The problem is boomers run most rich countries now, an unintended consequence of having population growth dropping below replacement level. They either are, or are becoming, the major political force most everywhere that matters, politicians almost invariably bowing to their will. And they want their retirement plans working as intended. So, no, housing isn't going to come down, or if it does, it's at best going to be temporary.

          • If you are already in your home and affording the payment ( a reasonable assumption to make about your average current homeowner) then a drop in the market only hurts your equity and won't have any effect on affordability for the current owner.

            So please, crash away already. It's coming.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            Boomers are 61-79. The older of those are going to be dying. The younger, if they actually used their houses as part of their retirement plan, are going to be downsizing. Meanwhile, nobody else has the money to buy their houses.

            So yeah, prices are probably going to come down, either by dropping naturally or getting inflated away. My sympathies for anybody who bought their first one in the last ten years.

      • Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

        by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2025 @04:51PM (#65637050) Journal

        Neither side of politics is going to or can do anything about this.

        There's plenty that can be done. Not slamming our closest friendly trading partners with tariffs - such as all the lumber we import from Canada, or household appliances from Korea, or furniture from Vietnam and Thailand - would be a good start. Not indiscriminately rounding up the day laborers and skilled workers who do a lot of construction would be another. Not jeopardizing the Fed's independence, running trillion-dollar annual deficits to give tax breaks to the richester, jerking the economy around, and disrupting the US' standing in the world would cause long-term bond rates to lower, bringing mortgage costs down.

        Is any of this going to happen? I dunno. I know that the folks presently in power are actively making things worse, though. Just throwing up ones hands and saying "nothing can be done" also isn't a solution.

      • Well, home sells have fallen flat across the country and prices will eventually follow. The vast majority of people can't afford to buy a home or the home they currently own already.

        Just sit tight. The crash is coming and home prices will follow, it just takes a bit longer. Also hope and pray they don't lower interest rates to much, because that will delay the housing correction.

    • Thereâ(TM)s that and the fact that AI is acting as this generationâ(TM)s Industrial Revolution. If the government doesnâ(TM)t help manage this, then the cost to the nation will be bad. The problem is that itâ(TM)s current planning is only good for two tweats, while other nations try to consider a 10 year plan and manage accordingly.

      • Thereâ(TM)s that and the fact that AI is acting as this generationâ(TM)s Industrial Revolution. If the government doesnâ(TM)t help manage this, then the cost to the nation will be bad. The problem is that itâ(TM)s current planning is only good for two tweats, while other nations try to consider a 10 year plan and manage accordingly.

        I wonder if AI could fix slashdot's unicode support. It clearly can't convince users to stop posting unsupported characters, not even God could do that.

    • Yes, otherwise the entire economy would be collapsed, not stressed.

  • Sorry if I failed to empathize.

    • It's fine for me and I don't even break 70k a year while living in San Diego. Maybe people should stop being such shop-aholics, stop eating out multiple times a week, stop taking all these vacations. But hey, yolo away and complain you can't deal with a $500 dollar surprise.

      People make their own financial misery every day and it's largely nothing to do with government actions.

  • The American dream is dead.

  • Yeah but how about those cheap eggs? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2025 @03:08PM (#65636672)
    Honestly I don't blame anyone who is so dumb that they actually thought Trump would be beneficial to them economically. I had a next door neighbor, ardent republican, five kids from three dads and voted Republican consistently even though she was only alive because a Democrat past the law that paid for the heart surgery she needed and one of her kids was only alive because again same Democrat paid for the surgery that kid needed. Never mind all five kids were raised on food stamps...

    She was a hard worker. She had retrained at least three times in her life for careers that were already on the way out when she was being retrained. Consistently taken advantage of by basically everyone.

    But dangnabbit she just thought the Republicans were more patriotic so she showed up to the polls every other year and voted for them. And she wouldn't hear anything else.

    Eventually she lost the house she was living in when the banks stole it from her along with all her equity in the fallout from the 2008 market crash. Not too long after that I moved away for work and have been stuck in apartments ever since.

    But I can't get too angry at her because well, she's just not that bright. You can't really get too angry at somebody being taken advantage of like that.

    The fuckers I really hate are the trumpers around here who aren't so fucking stupid that they don't realize Trump was going to be bad for the economy.

    Those fuckers new damn well what was going to happen but they thought they were going to get away with it. And some of them might.

    Those are the ones that I reserved my full and unrestrained hatred for. The kind of person who voted for Trump because they don't like queer people or they are worried they're going to get a few too many beers in them and say the n-word in public or they just want to see some people get hurt.

    And I know damn well they're out there. People who knew full well what they were voting for and why. The kind of assholes who would yell about TDS at me when I tried warning people about what was coming.

    • Re:Yeah but how about those cheap eggs? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Torodung ( 31985 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2025 @03:42PM (#65636836) Journal

      I live in dairy farm country. The reason eggs got so expensive was an outbreak of avian flu that caused farmers to slaughter most of their laying stock to protect the rest. It was so catastrophic because they were in cages, weren't healthy to begin with, and were stacked within less than a foot of each other in all directions (unless you got top bunk).

      Meanwhile, non-factory farmed eggs are now cheaper. I think I like the price of eggs where they are, now that I don't have to worry about salmonella. Maybe restaurant warnings about undercooked eggs will even disappear.

      So, hey Slashdot, I'm sorry for responding to rsilvergun, but people should know why their eggs became so costly. It was that the way they were being produced was also costly, in the quality and health of the product. Enjoy your nutritious, healthy eggs America.

      • And cheaper eggs because they more tightly regulate the conditions.

        I am genuinely curious what made you think it was inappropriate to respond to me. Are you just a right winger? A trump supporter?

        I'd be curious why. Since you personally experienced that right wing ideology does not work.

        If you're just bugged by the amount of politics we are all in our late 40s to our mid-60s. Heck some of us are pushing 70. So politics and society kind of dominate our lives.

        Like how if we properly regulated

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        but people should know why their eggs became so costly.

        You're absolutely right. Anyone and everyone that was paying attention at the time knew why the price of eggs shot up. Oddly enough, the Venn diagram of people with that knowledge doesn't overlap that much with people that thought Trump was the guy to fix it.

    • Re:Yeah but how about those cheap eggs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anoncoward69 ( 6496862 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2025 @05:15PM (#65637122)
      Perhaps the democrats should pick better candidates. When your opposition is a felon that is disliked by most people and your opposition still gets elected that should speak VOLUMES to the choice your party made for a candidate.

      • Re:Yeah but how about those cheap eggs? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by hadleyburg ( 823868 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2025 @05:35PM (#65637170)

        Perhaps the democrats should pick better candidates. When your opposition is a felon that is disliked by most people and your opposition still gets elected that should speak VOLUMES to the choice your party made for a candidate.

        It's still a puzzle for me. I'm not American, BTW, so that might make it more difficult for me to comprehend.

        I simply can't understand why people would opt for Trump over *any* other candidate. I know about disgruntlement in the rust belt. And sure, I understand that in any country you might have up to about 10% of the voters supporting some ultra right wing party, or some other wacky extreme group. But *half* of the US population thought that Trump would be a good choice...

        I find it baffling.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          I simply can't understand why people would opt for Trump over *any* other candidate.

          I would tend to agree with you. But I trend heavily to the Democratic side, and I would have voted for a fetid sack of shit over Trump. However, I do agree with OP's "Perhaps the democrats should pick better candidates." comment. Biden should have been crystal clear from the get-go that he was a one-term president. And the number of times we've heard "Women don't have the temperament for the position" in the past few years should have told the DNC that there are still too many old crusty fucks alive and

      • It would be nice. But the entire party is now showing they're batsh*t crazy. Sad.
      • Consisting of a Young Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ and they still would have lost that election because of voter suppression.

        Stalin was wrong it's not about who counts the votes it's about who gets to vote in the first place. Having goons challenging millions of signatures and voter registrations combined with multi-hour waits to vote in swing straits is all you really need. Mix in a little overwhelming propaganda by completely taking over all sources of information and you can't lose

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by G00F ( 241765 )

      Its less that trump is in office, and more that he is being giving powers and almost unchallenged while most of the left complains about elon being hitler or other dumb tangents.

      I swear they are letting trump consolidate power, because they "know" after his idiocy they have the election in the bag, and want that power themselves.

  • I think linking to Reuters as a news source is generally acceptable. However, they were just rehashing some bits from a press release from Bank of America [bankofamerica.com], who actually did the survey (mostly about workplace benefits, like employee assistance programs) and posted their own report [bankofamerica.com]. Reuters and Slashdot ought to have linked to that instead.
  • Much has happened in the USA, this year.

    Losing their job, losing their child's free lunch, losing free vaccines and a sympathetic ear at HHS, losing their healthcare (in 2 years), kidnappings at work or on the street, paying more for eggs and rent, schools de-funded, shops not stocking foreign-made goods and domestic produce, armed soldiers patrolling the street, anti-pollution rules cancelled, anti-monopoly and anti price-gouging rules cancelled: What do people have to feel stressed about?

  • sampling problem (Score:3)

    by DuroSoft ( 1009945 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2025 @07:37PM (#65637474) Homepage
    I mean, users of BOA definitely are, what with all the overdraft fees etc
  • Anytime theres a customer fraud complaint. It involves BofA attempting to deny to customers any wrong doing or negligence.

  • It really is that bad for many in the US. Rising food prices and stagnant wages have pushed people into borrowing just to cover essentials. A recent AP-NORC poll shows about half of adults say grocery costs are a “major” stress factor, and many rely on credit or buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) schemes
    https://apnews.com/article/cd1... [apnews.com]

    CBS reports that about one in four Americans now use BNPL for groceries, up from 14% last year (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/buy-now-pay-later-bnpl-loans-groceries

    An Urban

  • Does stupidity have consequences? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GeekWithAKnife ( 2717871 ) on Thursday September 04, 2025 @05:57AM (#65638232)
    This is a question that a lot of US workers seems to be unable to answer.
    If you have to choose between a former Attorney General with an odd laugh OR a person convicted of sexual assault with a salesman smile whom do you choose?
    I know it's a tough choice because "woke BS is dead" and "they gonna make our kids transexual" and "Hunter Biden's laptop" etc but take a moment and really concentrate here.

    Upon closer inspection there are two flawed humans. Flawed because no human is perfect.
    ...however one of them is a dirty, turn everything to shit, scumbag of a creature and the other is not. Can you tell which?

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