On top of that, unexpected expenses started to spiral, like when her daughter fell and needed two stitches on her chin at the emergency room. Stephanie Roth watched her debt balloon, along with her minimum payments. "Things are more expensive and just to keep up with where you were last year, you have to pay a lot more." "For a lot of people, this is not, 'I'm going out and buying something fancy,'" she says. Schlesinger says the rising price of basics, like food, gas and clothing, have landed millions of Americans in real financial distress. "And then we saw many people plow through those pandemic era savings, left with nothing." "But then 2022 starts and inflation doesn't go down," says Schlesinger. Schlesinger says stimulus checks, lockdown and pay raises had people in really strong financial shape, with the highest personal savings rate on record. I mean a lot of money," says Jill Schlesinger, CBS news business analyst and author of The Great Money Reset. "We saw Americans across the income stream save a lot of money. What's so strange about this is that back in 2021, that debt had fallen to near-record lows. Millennials like Roth have seen their debt rise by nearly 30% since before the pandemic, to about $3.8 trillion. At the same time, her credit card company was raising interest rates: from about 15% in 2019, to more than 22%. Roth started leaning on her credit card to pick up the extra expenses her paycheck couldn't cover. "The cell phone bill came up due and I didn't have the money in my checking account," she recalls. "That's half my paycheck right there."īetween childcare and the rising price of gas, food and clothes, Roth feels like her paycheck is spent before she takes it home. Especially considering the cost of daycare. That was a stretch on a salary of about $40,000 a year. Roth took full custody of her children and became the main support for her children. But during the pandemic, Roth went through a divorce and her finances and lifestyle changed dramatically. She had never really had debt and had always been good with money. She has a full time job as an administrative medical assistant, helping adults with disabilities get services. Roth has three children, ages 2, 4 and 6 and lives in Lebanon, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville. "I was literally looking at the list thinking, 'What has inflation not messed with?' And I signed up for bananas, because they're still 59 cents a pound." But last month, she realized that was no longer the case. She could bring the sandwiches, the soda and the cupcakes. "You know, the big, expensive things."īefore the pandemic, Roth was in a good financial situation. "I used to always be a mom who would sign up for the main stuff like the sandwiches," she says. Stephanie Roth, 41, realized just how much her financial situation had deteriorated when she was signing up to bring a dish to the Valentine's Day party at her kids' daycare.
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