Approximately 62% of Americans have no emergency savings for things such as a $1,000 emergency room visit or a $500 car repair, according to a new survey of 1,000 adults by personal finance website Bankrate.com. Faced with an emergency, they say they would raise the money by reducing spending elsewhere (26%), borrowing from family and/or friends (16%) or using credit cards (12%).
The average household has the following:
$15,762 of credit card debt
$168,614 in mortgage debt
$27,141 in auto loan debt
$48,172 in student loan debt
$130,922 in other debt
Average total debt is $390,611.
The average American reads one book a year.
Average American adult works 47 hours a week.
Children aged 2-11 watch over 24 hours of TV per week, while adults aged 35-49 watch more than 33 hours, according to data from Nielsen that suggests TV time increases the older we get. The average American watches more than five hours of live television every day.
155 million Americans regularly play video games for an average 6.6 hours a week.
The average game player is 35 years old.
On average, Americans spend 50 minutes a day on Facebook. Maybe that doesn’t sound like so much. But there are only 24 hours in a day, and the average person sleeps for 8.8 of them. That means more than one-sixteenth of the average user’s waking time is spent on Facebook.
Now...just imagine if we invest some of that TV time, game time and money, into our children? Or how about spending that time bettering yourself to leave a better legacy for your children? I can say that these stats were my house 5 years ago. Since then, we've paid of nearly $80k in debt, went part time in my job and spend very little time watching TV. We focus on making ourselves the best version of us we can, and pouring into our children. All of this was accomplished by redirecting 10 hours of our time each week. Some might call that 10 hours a sacrifice, I call it an investment into a legacy that will forever change our destiny.
