Agreed, and I may have been a bit too quick in the reply.
I think age and life situation play a much bigger part in this than people recognize, and I'll go out and say "especially younger people". You can pay lip service to it, but if you're in your late 20s or early 30s starting a family, your financial obligations and priorities are vastly different from an empty nester or single person in their 50s.
By almost any measure, a software engineer with 20+ years of experience - especially someone who perhaps didn't have kids - should probably have months of years of savings to tap in to to weather a downturn. But I've also known folks with 10-15 years of increasing experience who still struggled financially, and it was usually a mix of having kids and limited forward planning that kept them in a 'paycheck to paycheck' lifestyle - often, not even a terribly extravagant one.
Most of the bad decisions I've made have come during times when I was in very bad financial situations. The stress contributes to poor decision making, and it was often something I wasn't even aware of in my early days. I just thought that's "how it is". Even getting to the point of having 3-4 months of savings seemed outrageous and out of reach to my younger self.
And yes... the black swan of a medical situation can deplete savings enormously quickly. Even relatively small hiccups we've had over the years have ended up taking thousands out of pocket that were unexpected. Having, say, $30k in savings can help you weather a lot of unforeseen setbacks - car issue, housing issues, moving expenses, etc. A medical condition may drain that 'overnight'. There may be loads of billing delays/etc which may drag it out over months, but the 'debt owed' may be immediate.
My wife got sick and within a few days, we're in ER with double pneumonia and she's struggling to breathe (scary). $4k owed. I blacked out from covid shot - ambulanced to ER. Another $4k owed. Older me can weather those costs now. 25 years ago those sorts of expenses would have been crippling. And these are tiny compared to other things that can happen - my family has generally been quite fortunate with respect to health conditions and medical issues over the years. I know others who are far worse off.
I think age and life situation play a much bigger part in this than people recognize, and I'll go out and say "especially younger people". You can pay lip service to it, but if you're in your late 20s or early 30s starting a family, your financial obligations and priorities are vastly different from an empty nester or single person in their 50s.
By almost any measure, a software engineer with 20+ years of experience - especially someone who perhaps didn't have kids - should probably have months of years of savings to tap in to to weather a downturn. But I've also known folks with 10-15 years of increasing experience who still struggled financially, and it was usually a mix of having kids and limited forward planning that kept them in a 'paycheck to paycheck' lifestyle - often, not even a terribly extravagant one.
Most of the bad decisions I've made have come during times when I was in very bad financial situations. The stress contributes to poor decision making, and it was often something I wasn't even aware of in my early days. I just thought that's "how it is". Even getting to the point of having 3-4 months of savings seemed outrageous and out of reach to my younger self.
And yes... the black swan of a medical situation can deplete savings enormously quickly. Even relatively small hiccups we've had over the years have ended up taking thousands out of pocket that were unexpected. Having, say, $30k in savings can help you weather a lot of unforeseen setbacks - car issue, housing issues, moving expenses, etc. A medical condition may drain that 'overnight'. There may be loads of billing delays/etc which may drag it out over months, but the 'debt owed' may be immediate.
My wife got sick and within a few days, we're in ER with double pneumonia and she's struggling to breathe (scary). $4k owed. I blacked out from covid shot - ambulanced to ER. Another $4k owed. Older me can weather those costs now. 25 years ago those sorts of expenses would have been crippling. And these are tiny compared to other things that can happen - my family has generally been quite fortunate with respect to health conditions and medical issues over the years. I know others who are far worse off.