18 SCARY Money Statistics in 2026!

Transcript 

On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, 18 scary money statistics of 2026

What's up everybody, and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're gonna dive into 18 scary money statistics of 2026. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter.

And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you wanna help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, before we dive into this episode, just a quick announcement.

If you are interested in working with me one-on-one, I am taking a small handful of people. We are getting close to being out of spots, and then we'll have a wait list for folks. But if you are interested in working with me one-on-one, go ahead and shoot me an email, andrew@mastermoney.co, and I can send you the information.

The only qualification is you have to make over $100,000 per year, and you have to be willing to put in the work. Those are the qualifications that we have on hand. So in any event, if you are interested in that, feel free to shoot me over an email. Now, awesome. Let's dive in. So today we're diving into the episode, "18 Scary Money Statistics of 2026", and this is one of my favorite episodes that we do every single year.

We do this on Halloween week every year, and I talk about the scariest financial decisions that people are making in America. And so this is always, always, always one of those episodes that I think is fun, and I really look forward to this. Now, what we're gonna do in this episode is I'm gonna go through each of those different scary stats, and then we're gonna dive deeper into some of the ways that you can solve some of those problems.

So buckle up, because some of these are wild, and we're gonna dive deeper. I'm gonna quit yapping, and without further ado, let's get into it All right, let's get into the first one. Number one is all about financial infidelity. So this is one that is super interesting. 45% of people in committed relationships admit they don't know anything at all about their partner's finances.

Now, that alone is wild to me. Someone in a committed relationship has no idea what is going on with their partner's finances, and nearly one in ten are hiding major sources of debt, expenses, or income, and 43% say financial secrets are at least as bad as physical cheating. Things like hidden credit cards, undisclosed loans, and secret spending all undermine a household's financial stability.

And so let's think about these stats for a second, because 45% of people in committed relationships admit they don't know anything about their partner's finances. I think that's a major problem. If you're not communicating with your partner about your finances and you guys are not talking about money, then there are either things that are not going correctly or you are just not prioritizing the thing that can drive your freedom.

And so one of the ways to solve this, and one of the easiest ways to solve this, is just making sure that you are open and honest about money. If you're hiding debt, if you're hiding spending, any of those different things, people call this financial infidelity or they call it financial cheating. And so you can really damage your relationship by hiding financial transactions.

And in fact, one of the leading causes of divorce in this country right now is based on finances, and this is the reason why. Because if you're hiding money and not having conversations about money, that's a real, real problem. Whether you like it or not, money is gonna have a big impact on your relationship.

It's gonna have a big impact on how you handle money. It doesn't mean you have to have a lot of it. It doesn't mean you have to be super, super rich. What I mean by that is money is what makes the world go around right now. And so if you understand money and you have a, a good working relationship with your finances, you're talking about your dreams, you're talking about your goals, that's gonna be super helpful.

Now, if you feel as though you're not talking about money enough right now, here's a couple of things that you can do. First of all is when you get started, start off by once a month having a money meeting. This can be a fifteen, thirty, forty-five minute conversation where you begin to talk to each other about money.

You start to have conversations about money. And this doesn't start with spreadsheets. It doesn't start with doing a bunch of, you know, line items and yelling at each other and blaming each other and pointing at each other. No, instead, this starts with thinking about your dreams. What are your big dreams?

Maybe you wanna own a vacation home in the middle of Tuscany. Maybe you wanna spend more time going golfing together. Maybe you wanna spend more time going to workout classes or having the ability to do the things that you want to do day in and day out, and having freedom. Start off with your dreams, and then use money as a tool to have conversations about how you can achieve those dreams.

That's how these money conversations should go. Sure, there's gonna be overspending in certain areas. Maybe one of you likes to order from Amazon or Target or wherever else a little too often. Maybe one of you is going to Sephora just a little bit too much. That's okay. But pointing fingers is never gonna get you in the right direction.

The reason why people shut down, the reason why people hide some of this stuff some of the time, is because the other person or the other partner is always blaming and pointing the finger. So sometimes this needs to be something that you both look in and try to figure out, how can we work together to solve some of these problems?

Because you should not have secrets when it comes to money, especially in a relationship. If you do have secrets, then you are doing this the wrong way. I can promise you, money is so much better when you try to tackle it together. Sure, maybe some of you have made mistakes in the past, and you really have not come together to try to work on those mistakes, but when you come together as a team, when you come together as one unit and work on those financial issues, boy, oh boy, is it so much better.

So I encourage you right now, schedule a money meeting and start to begin to have a conversation about money. You really, really need to work through this, and I think it's super important. Because if you continue on this path of having financial secrecy, or you continue on this path of not having conversations about money, it can cost you your entire relationship.

So figure out if that's worth it to you. Is your relationship worth it to you to make sure that you start having conversations about money? Because it is death by a thousand cuts, and what I mean by that is it is a slow burn that is gonna get worse and worse and worse if you do not deal with it. All right?

Number two is childcare costs more than rent. Across 100 of the largest metropolitan areas, childcare for an infant and a four-year-old costs thirty-one point five percent more than rent on a two-bedroom unit. Now, this is the silent killer for a lot of parents' budgets, and it's not talked about enough.

Now, I want you to understand something here as we go through this. This is a season of life, and this is a season of life that you can get through, and I'm gonna give you some tactics on how to think about this in a second. So the average annual childcare cost increased thirteen point three percent from eleven thousand five hundred and eighty-two dollars to thirteen thousand one hundred and twenty-eight dollars per child.

Now, I know from experience right now, based on these statistics, that these are absolutely accurate. I have an eight-year-old, I have a five-year-old, and I have a two-year-old who is currently in childcare. And so I've had all three of those children go through childcare, and this is one hundred percent accurate.

I have been paying for childcare for eight years. And so I understand this number very, very specifically, and I track it very closely, and this is a hundred percent true. At thirteen thousand one hundred and twenty-eight dollars per child, two children would approximately cost twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty-six dollars annually.

That's approximately two thousand one hundred and eighty-eight dollars per month before housing, groceries, transportation, and other expenses. My friends, this is the silent killer to your budget, and if you are feeling the pressure, the pain, and the stronghold that this can be on your financial life, and it drives you crazy because it reduces the amount that you can invest, or re- it reduces your ability to just get by, or sometimes you feel as though you gotta go into debt because childcare is taking the majority of your extra income, well, this is one of those things that you're not alone.

The country is struggling with this, and I know how difficult this can be. But I want you to understand that this is a season. This is a season in time that will eventually go away, and I want you to do the best you possibly can to focus on a couple of things. One is let's think through how we can increase our income, because cutting back is not the easiest thing to do when you have expenses that are costing you thousands of dollars every single month.

So if we can find ways to increase our income, that is number one. Number two is we have an entire episode actually diving into should you consider having one of the parents stay home, or should you continue paying for childcare? And that is an important episode, I think, to figuring out the evaluation long term of how you can do this.

Because when you look at how much childcare is costing, sometimes it makes a little bit more sense to have one of the parents stay home for a delta that really doesn't make a huge difference. And so in reality, I would definitely look deeper into that number if you feel as though you're only making, you know- a little bit more than what your childcare is costing.

So that's a really important metric to think through. But number three is if you can't invest as much as you normally would because of childcare, that's okay. I'm gonna give you the okay that during this timeframe, you can invest a little bit less. But trying to make sure you're still investing and still making progress and still paying down that debt is very, very important.

You don't just give up because of childcare. No. You work on increasing your income. You look and seeing if there is expenses you could decrease during this timeframe. But in reality, your income is gonna solve the majority of this problem, and I wanna keep saying that over and over and over again. If you're trying to solve this problem by cutting back here and there, two thousand dollars is a huge number to have to deal with, or one thousand dollars is another huge number to have to deal with.

And cutting back a couple of subscriptions here and there, sure, it's gonna help, but it's not gonna solve the problem. Your income will very quickly solve the problem because if you make a hundred thousand dollars per year and you get a ten percent raise, well, that's gonna cover a year of childcare for one child.

And so that's where I really, really want you to focus on the income side of the equation, 'cause a lot easier. It's a lot easier to focus on that than having to worry about, you know, cutting back as much as you possibly can, and it really still is not enough, and that's just a very difficult thing to have to go through.

So again, childcare, I understand, is a big deal here. And so for many of you out there, you know, if you're working on navigating this, you can shoot me a message or an email. I can help you through some of that stuff because I have been doing this for eight years now, and I understand the costs and how much of a weight this can have All right, number three, $2.1 million is sitting left behind in 401ks.

So there are 401ks out there that many of you may have forgotten about, or you just don't know what the heck do I do with my old 401k. And $2.1 million right now is sitting left behind. An estimated 31.9 million 401k accounts have been left at former employers. And these accounts collectively hold approximately $2.1 trillion.

The average balance is $66,691. See, there's a funny thing that happens with your 401k. When you leave money invested, it continues to grow. And you'd be surprised at how big these accounts can get over this timeframe. Now, this represents roughly one quarter of all 401k assets. This is absolutely unbelievable.

Not everyone is left behind is forgotten. Many people have intentionally leave retirement savings at their former employer's plan. All right, so let's talk about this for a second. You have three options when it comes to your old 401k. One, you can leave it there if you like the investment options and you can continue to invest it at the place that it currently is.

Two, you can roll it over into your new employer's 401k, which is something you can do if you like those investment options. Or three, which is my favorite, is you can take those dollars and roll them over into a rollover IRA. You could do this at the location that you choose so that you can choose the best possible investments for your asset allocation and your specific situation.

And so what I did was I rolled over my old 401k into Vanguard and did a rollover IRA over there. Now, my old employer actually had great investment options. They had a bunch of Vanguard funds over there. They had a bunch of really, really good stuff, but I still rolled it over because I have full control when I roll it over.

Then it's just under my name. I don't have to worry about logging into the old employer's accounts or logging into the old location. And instead I can fully control this money. Now, some people say to me when I talk about this, well, isn't it better to have it all combined in one spot? No, you can roll it over into a rollover IRA.

Combined interest doesn't work that way where all your money combined in one location is going to grow faster. That's not how it works. And so you need to understand that if you roll it over into a rollover IRA, you have full control. And control is what I want when it comes to my finances as much as possible.

So those are your three options. There's also a service called Capitalize. If you've never heard of Capitalize and they don't promote me or anything, I'm just talking about this because it's a great service. They'll actually help you roll it over wherever you want to go and they do it for free. So it's actually pretty cool.

So it's Capitalize is someone who does that as well. All right. Number four is nearly one in five workers are borrowing from their 401k. 19.2% of workers have an outstanding 401k loan, and a 401k loan generally requires repayment with interest, and usually this is through payroll deductions. Now here's the interesting part, okay?

The loan amounts for borrowing against your 401k are commonly the lesser of $50,000 or 50% of the vested balance. Now this is subject to exceptions or adjustments, okay? But 19.2% of workers have an outstanding 401k loan. And I think this is one of those areas where if you do have an outstanding 401k loan or if you're considering a 401k loan, I would consider not doing it.

The reason for this is because you want to avoid debt at all costs, number one, but two is you're interrupting compound interest unnecessarily. Because a couple of things can happen here. One is if your employment ends, they may accelerate the repayment plan of when you need to pay back that 401k loan.

Well, then all of a sudden you got yourself into a sticky situation where you're gonna have to pay this back so much faster. But an unpaid balance can also become a taxable distribution, meaning that you're gonna have to pay potential additional tax, uh, for borrowing this money. Now, the pros of a 401k loan is a lot of times the interest goes back into your account and yada, yada, yada.

I get it. But if you're interrupting the investment returns of that money that you are borrowing against, that's a problem, my friend. That is a problem that you do not want to be doing because then you are just interrupting long-term compound interest, and we've seen the power of compound interest going forward.

And so I want you to just understand that if you are borrowing against your 401k, it's not the end of the world, but it's also not something I would ever do because it gets in the way of your future wealth building, and that's not something I'd be interested in Number five is more than half of Americans have no estate plan whatsoever.

So 56% of US adults have no estate planning documents, and will ownerships reportedly declined from thirty-one percent to twenty-six percent in one year. Forty-two percent of people wouldn't know what to do if a family member died today. Now listen, estate plans are so incredibly important, and if you have anybody who depends on you or if you just want your stuff to go where you want it to go, you need to make sure you have a will on hand.

Now, people are saying to themselves, "Well, I don't really have much stuff. I have a dog, I have a s-- you know, a little bit of furniture," that type of stuff, and maybe, you know, a few thousand dollars in a brokerage account. But you still want that stuff to go to the correct person. Even if you have an animal or a pet, you want to make sure that that goes to the correct person, otherwise this goes through probate.

And this can be a huge problem. It could take a really long time. And so instead, getting a will in place can be super, super important. The other thing you need to do is make sure you have beneficiary designations on all of your investment accounts and all of your other accounts that you have on hand, whether it's checking or high-yield savings.

Make sure you have beneficiaries for some of those accounts so that people know where it's gonna go if something were to happen to you. Now, if you have a lot of assets on hand or you have a lot of folks in your life where you need these assets to go to, then you start to consider a trust. As you approach, you know, a million-dollar net worth and you have a bunch of additional assets on hand, that's where you want to start to think through having a trust potentially, because that's gonna help you customize a lot of different things.

Like for example, for me, I have a trust because I have three kids, and I have a lot of different things that I want to happen if anything were to ever happen to me and my wife. God forbid, a plane goes down, the plane crashes, and both my wife and I are on that plane, well, then there needs, there needs to be a number of different plans in place of where my children go, who my children go to, who gets the money to help raise my children, all those different things.

But in addition, where does all my wealth go, and how does it get distributed to my children? Those are the types of things that I wanted to be thinking about. A trust helps you customize this process and this plan. So make sure you look into estate planning. Make sure you have at least a will in place, because fifty-six percent of US adults that have no estate planning documents should not be happening.

Even if you are young and you're like, "I got a long time horizon," at least have a will in place. They're cheap, they're easy to put together, and it makes sure your stuff goes exactly where you want it to go. Number six is food delivery costs 80% more than pickup, and it is still one of the main ways that a lot of different Americans are eating out.

So food delivery costs 79.5% more on average than picking up the same meal. That's approximately $9.30 per order. And delivery reportedly costs 601.7% more than preparing a comparable meal at home. But here's the crazy part. Half of Gen Z reportedly orders delivery at least once every single week. If you order delivery once every single week, the annual additional cost is gonna be $484 per year.

If you order it twice a week, it's $967 per year. If you order it three times per week, it is $1,451 per year. And if you order it five times per week, like if you get it for lunch every single day at work, it is an additional $2,418 per year. Now, these are measured against just picking it up, just picking up your order.

So if you eat out that often and you feel as though you need to order delivery, it costs significantly more. And I, as someone who is a millionaire, who is someone who has been building wealth for a long time, I still have a hard time stomaching the cost of DoorDash or Uber Eats. In fact, I probably DoorDash or use Uber Eats less than one time a year, probably every 18 months.

And it's only when I'm in a pinch or if I'm traveling somewhere and I have no idea where I am and I don't really have transportation and it's probably just cheaper to order delivery than to Uber somewhere, then I will order it. But outside of that, I almost never order it. Now, there's nothing wrong with ordering it, you know, every once in a while.

There's nothing wrong with valuing convenience, but it needs to be in your budget. And if you are going into debt, you're using buy now, pay later, like a lot of people are, for food delivery, boy, oh boy, is that a problem. And so I just want you to think through this really, really quickly. Also, if you're not hitting your retirement goals, but you are or- ordering food delivery, yeah, you got your priorities mixed up a little bit.

So I think you need to make sure that you are on track with some of this stuff. All right, number seven, Americans spend 2.5 times more on subscriptions than they think. So many people, if you ask them, "How much do you spend on subscriptions?" They will come back to you and give you a number, and many times this number is way, way, way lower than what they actually think.

Now, I audit my subscriptions on a quarterly basis, and let me just tell you right now, every time I audit my subscriptions, I think I spend X amount of dollars. I'm like, "Man, I just-- I cut back on a bunch of different things last, last quarter. I'm good to go." And every single time it is significantly higher than I thought it was.

And the reason for this is because we just don't understand the implications of just adding small subscriptions over time. So the estimated spending for Americans is $86 per month on subscriptions, but their actual average spending was $219 per month according to a CNR research survey. That's a difference of $133 per month or $1,596 annually.

Now, 70% of people reported forgetting to cancel a free trial before it became a paid subscription. In a separate figure reported consumers paid AI subscriptions an average of four tools costing about $66 per month. My, mine's way higher than that. And common subscription cases including streaming, fitness software, cloud storage, apps, memberships, and AI services.

Now, here's the thing about this, is this number is gonna continue to rise. Why? Well, you can look at a number of different things. One is streaming services. Those are rising every single month. Freaking Disney Plus just sent me another email that it's like over $20 now. Netflix has been rising every single y- I, I used to order Netflix, and they would deliver the DVDs to my house, and it was like $7 every single month in college.

Now I'm paying 20 plus dollars per month, uh, to have Netflix, so I can have it on multiple TVs if multiple people want to watch it in the house. And so now with these subscriptions, I am paying more typically than I would have with cable back in the day, and it is frustrating, but it's also one of those things that is the new reality.

Plus, you add in AI, you add in business subscriptions if you have a business, you add in all these different things, and you are going to see a massive rise. Let's think about the shopping experiences. Now you have to have Amazon Prime. Maybe you have Walmart Plus. Maybe you have a Costco membership. Maybe you have a Sam's Club membership.

Maybe you're like me, the big dumb idiot right here that keeps buying into all this stuff, and you have all four of those. And so this is one of those areas where I think Many of us are probably getting way out of control on subscriptions, and we don't even realize it. This number is way lower than what I spend personally, and I know that for, for sure.

And so I think that most of us are paying more than this, uh, when it comes to subscriptions. So in reality, if you are overpaying on subscriptions, this is an easy way to save over a thousand dollars per year. And if you are not maxing out something like your Roth IRA, you can take that thousand dollars of savings and throw it into something like a Roth IRA.

It's gonna make a huge difference in your life if you're not doing something like that. And so every time you save on subscriptions, do an audit every quarter, every three months, do an audit of your subscriptions, and then go in there and remove the ones you haven't used over the last quarter. Make sure that you're removing them and actively doing this.

When you remove those subscriptions, then redirect that money towards what you actually want it to do. Because if you just let it sit in your checking account, you're just gonna spend it again. But if you move those dollars towards something that you actually want those dollars to do, whether it's investing, paying down debt, saving in your emergency fund, that is how you get ahead.

And so I don't want you to save money, save money in quotations, but then not actually save it. Put it towards something you actually value. All right, perfect Number eight, this is one I am seeing happen more and more. The bank of mom and dad is still open. People are relying on their parents to get by in life.

Now listen, before I start on this one, I know times are tough, and I understand that having someone help supplement your lifestyle is sometimes necessary. In fact, if you're living at home and you're in your 20s, for example, nothing wrong with that. But you want to get to a point in time where your goal is to get stable.

Why? Because people who depend on other people for too long typically end up not doing as well in life as people who actually figure it out. And I want you to say this and understand this over and over and over again. Times are currently tough, but I have been diving deeper into some economic stuff and looking deeper into the history of wages versus what the actual cost of living is.

And yes, there is a large gap right now, but the interesting thing is right now there has never been easier to increase your income in a bunch of various ways. And so we wanna make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to become self-sufficient. And so here's the stats. I want you to hear these stats, okay?

Approximately 50% of parents with adult children are providing some financial support. This is up from 47% the previous year. I remember us talking about this last year at 47%. Parents supporting Gen Z adult children reportedly provide an average of $1,813 per month. That's $21,756 annually. And 47% of these parents say supporting adult children has compromised their own financial security.

About half of those reporting financial sacrifices have used savings and retirement funds There's a lot of problems in this. All around, there's a lot of problems here. One is parents, you need to take care of your own retirement first, then you can help out your kids. And this is really, really important to understand.

Otherwise, you're gonna get to your seventies, and your kids are gonna have to support you, and if they are not financially ahead enough already this early and this often, they're not gonna be able to financially support you. And so this is gonna cause a vicious cycle that if you don't take care of this as fast as you possibly can, you can get yourself into some murky water.

You need to be able to become self-sufficient on your own and not sacrifice retirement to help out your adult children. Now, adult children, there's nothing wrong with living near-- with your parents, but there is something wrong with going out and getting a luxury apartment, and your parents are providing two thousand or three thousand dollars a month so that you can live in that luxury apartment just so you can live the lifestyle like all of your other friends.

Or if you are going on multiple vacations per year, if you're ordering food delivery all the time, or if you're doing all these different things, but you can't support yourself, there's a problem there. And so in reality, I know the cost of living is high. I know the gap between wages is really, really difficult.

We just had Freddie Smith on talking about all these different things. I know it's difficult to own a home. I know the American dream is becoming less and less attainable for a lot of folks out there. But what if you were the one that actually changed that for yourself? Because maybe that's for everybody else, maybe that's for the crowd, but you're a wealth builder, and you're a person that is gonna pick up yourself by your bootstraps, and you're gonna transform your financial life.

I know you can do it. I'm telling you right now that you can do this. But you have to lock in. You have to be the one that decides, "I am gonna do this." Otherwise, you can play victim for the rest of your life, and you can blame the economy, you can blame society, and maybe those blames are warranted And I know it's hard, but what if you put together a two-year plan that said, "Hey, I'm not gonna rely on my parents.

I'm not gonna bring them down anymore. I'm not gonna be this weight that is causing this to happen. Instead, I'm gonna pick myself up. I'm gonna increase my income. I'm gonna do the things that I need to do in order to get to the point in time where I am self-sufficient." Listen, The Millionaire Next Door warns parents against this.

It talks through a bunch of studies of calling it economic outpatient care, where parents who give their kids money, typically those kids are not as self-sufficient as kids who had to figure it out on their own. And I wanna give you an example of this, okay? Let's say, for example, someone is living in an apartment and they're on their own, and their parents are paying for that apartment.

Well, right off the bat, they don't have to figure out how to come up with enough money to pay for that apartment. They have the luxury, they have the privilege of their parents paying for that apartment, okay? So why would they work harder to go make sure that their parents aren't paying for that anymore?

Why would they work harder to figure it out? No. Instead, what they will do is they will continue to do that for longer periods of time. Now, I want you to be different. If you're listening to this right now and your parents are supplementing part of your income, I want you to be different. But I have plenty of people in my life that I have seen this happen time and time again, where it's like, "Hey, I'm gonna live here for one year," or, "I'm gonna be taking money from my parents for one year, but then after that I'm gonna be out on my own."

And they do it for two years, then they do it for five years, then it's six years, then it's seven years, and it drags on and on and on. Why? Because they don't have to figure it out. They don't have to go do anything. And because it's harder to go have to go figure it out on your own, they're just not gonna do it because they have the luxury of someone taking care of it for them.

Listen, nothing wrong with any of this if your parents are wealthy or if they're doing well, but if you are weighing them down, that's the big issue here. And a lot of people are gonna take issue with what I'm saying, which is fine. You're subject to your own opinion, but I have watched it happen with dozens and dozens of peers and family members in my life, and I am very, very attuned to this stuff.

This is something I look at a lot, and I think for most people out there, you need to understand that you want to have a mindset that says, "I'm gonna do it on my own. I'm gonna do it on my own. Nobody else is gonna help me. I'm gonna be the one that does it." Because the person who has that mentality, they're gonna become very, very wealthy.

Number nine is six-figure earners are still living paycheck to paycheck. So if you guys don't know, I host another show with NerdWallet called Your Next Dollar, and that show is targeted only to people making over $100,000 per year. And we can see this time and time again, that there is a huge portion of that audience that is still living paycheck to paycheck.

In fact, a survey found that 48% of people earning over 100,000 or more reported living paycheck to paycheck. And even among people earning $200,000 or more, 36% reported the same. Now, these figures are super interesting because the rising cost of living is causing people to live paycheck to paycheck, but it's also the rising cost of expectations.

Your kid's gotta be playing in travel sports. You gotta go to private school. You gotta go and pay-- buy the fancy car. You gotta buy the bigger house because each kid needs their own bedroom. All of these are the expectations of this generation and of all of us out here. I get it. I fall prey to it as well.

This is something I am just as guilty of as everyone else. But guess what? If we can change our expectations a little bit, if we can figure out how to build a delta where we're not living paycheck to paycheck, when we're making six figures per year, and I get it, six figures in 1990 would be about $50,000 per year.

I get it all. I understand. But you wanna make sure that you are working towards building a life that you want, and the only way to do that is to save a portion of your income. So if you have housing that is costing way too much, or you have a bunch of different car payments that are way too high, or if you are spending too much on eating out or groceries, or if daycare is eating into all of this, we need to find a way to either increase our income, decrease our expenses, or both.

If you can do both, that is the best way to do this, finding that gap. Also, every time you get a raise, if your income level rises up to that raise, well, you have lifestyle inflation in play. And if you have too much lifestyle inflation, you will never get ahead financially. If you can live on the same amount that you make right now forever, or at least until retirement, that is gonna get you way ahead because each raise means you can invest this much more, and this much more, and then this much more, and it's going to allow you to really transform your financial life long term.

Number 10 is home insurance is rising three times faster than inflation. So homeowners insurance premiums reportedly increased 46% since 2021, approximately three times the rate of general inflation over that comparison period. In Florida, reported average annual premiums reached $8,292 following an 18% increase in 2025.

That equals approximately $691 per month just for homeowners policy. And nearly three in 10 homeowners reportedly said they would drop coverage if they could. Now, this is a concerning thing. Insurance costs are rising and they're rising faster and faster every single year. This is one of those reasons why you feel strapped.

This is one of those reasons why some people have to rely on their parents to earn money. This is one of those invisible forces that keeps taking a little bit more of your money every single year. And so this is one of the reasons why owning a home is also not attainable for everyone. And in fact, if you run total cost of ownership and you see how expensive homeownership is going to be with home insurance, all of a sudden you may decide, eh, this may not be for me.

But this is also why your landlord has to increase the price of rent because if they do have homeowners insurance, which not all of them do, but if they do have homeowners insurance, this is another reason why. And so these higher premiums are going to increase the true cost of homeownership, which is why it feels more and more unattainable for a lot of you out there, which just leads me into number 11.

The typical first-time homebuyer is now at the age of 40. First-time homebuyers accounted for a record low 21% of home purchases, and this is according to the National Association of Realtors, NAR, which is, uh, really locked in on the housing market. The median age for first-time buyers reached 40 for the first time.

In the 1980s, the median age for first-time homebuyer was in their upper 20s, and that's when interest rates were really, really high back then. Interest rates were very high. But things like higher home prices, things like mortgage rates, things like having to have higher down payment requirements, and other household expenses have made this really, really difficult to be able to get into a home.

And so this is one of those areas where the American dream is to own a home, and many people feel as though it's not attainable. Now, I wanna tell you something. Owning a home is a lifestyle decision. It is not a financial decision, meaning that if you run total cost of ownership, you'll see pretty quickly that owning a home is usually not a high rate of return whatsoever.

In fact, the Shiller Index, and I've talked about this a couple of different times, shows that it is anywhere from two and a half to 4% per year is what you make on owning a home. Whereas if you look at that in comparison to, you know, the, the stock market or other places, well, you're making 10% on average per year.

And so when we compare the two differences between those, all of a sudden we realize that pretty quickly, homeownership is a luxury. It is not something that is just part of the American dream that every single person should be pursuing, but instead it is a luxury. Now, I am someone who loves owning a home.

Homeownership is a lifestyle decision. If you wanna plant roots, if you like to remodel your house, if you like to do all these different things, then homeownership is a great thing to do. But run the numbers. Understand how to run the numbers on buying a house before you do it. Otherwise, you could get yourself into some really hot water and become house poor, and I don't want anybody listening to this show to become house poor.

We have full episodes talking about buy versus rent and how to think about that, so if you haven't heard those episodes, make sure you check that out. Number 12, student loan delinquency has reached 10.6%. So 10.6% of student loan balances were at least 90 days delinquent in Q2 of 2026. Now, that's up 10.3% from the preceding quarter.

And delinquency can lead to credit report damage, it can lead to collections agencies calling you, and reduce borrowing opportunities. And so you'd wanna make sure that if you are behind on s- some of those student loan payments, you either have a conversation or you figure out how to get ahead. Now, we recently just had an episode with Robert from The College Investor, and we talked about the updated student loan rules and what is happening and all the different changes.

So if you haven't heard that episode yet and you're trying to navigate student loans, that is a great episode to check out because that is gonna walk you through step by step all the different changes and some of the options that you currently have here right now. And in fact, that leads us to 13, student loan delinquencies are crushing credit scores.

So newly delinquent student loan borrowers who previously had credit scores above 720 experienced an average decline of approximately 177 points according to a 2025 report. And borrowers age 50 and older reportedly had the highest delinquency rate at 18%, which is amazing in a bad way. Now, here's the problem with this, is if your credit score goes down, this can lead to higher costs of borrowing, which is a six-figure decision, by the way, but it can also lead to really difficult times of being able to get a mortgage or car loan rates or credit card approvals.

All of this stuff becomes increasingly difficult the lower your score goes. And so if you're delinquent on some of these reports, it's really important to make sure that you're on top of this, otherwise you could have some major problems on hand Number 14 is Americans have $1.26 trillion in credit card debt.

Now, credit card debt is by far one of the biggest emergencies that you will have in your financial life if you do have credit card debt, and your goal is to pay it off as fast as you possibly can. In fact, we just had our episode recently talking about 19 different ways to pay off your debt faster. So if you haven't heard that episode, make sure you go back and check that out, uh, because it is one where I'm giving you a bunch of new tactics and ways to pay off your debt faster.

Now, here's the thing I want you to understand. Total credit card balances reach approximately $1.26 trillion in Q2 of two thousand and twenty-six, and balances increased twenty-one billion during that quarter alone. Auto loan balances reached approximately $1.71 trillion, and so high credit card interest rates makes revolving balances particularly expensive in this scenario.

Now, I wanna give you an example here of someone who has a $10,000 credit card balance at a 24% interest rate, okay? So if someone had $10,000 on a credit card with 24% APR, their monthly interest at the beginning would be approximately $200, okay? With a fixed $250 monthly payment, repayment would take approximately 6.8 years, and the total interest paid would be $10,300.

So the borrower in this scenario would pay more in interest than the original amount that they, they borrowed from that credit card, meaning, let's say, for example, you bought a bunch of random stuff for $10,000. All of those items would cost double and then some what you actually paid for them, just because you put it on a credit card and you did not pay that card off.

And so that 24% interest rate is really, really detrimental to your finances and can cause you to go backwards. But not just losing that $10,000, you're also losing out on the opportunity cost of what that $10,000 could have grown to if you would've invested those dollars instead. It's unbelievable what could happen there, and 6.8 years to repay that is just a really long time to be losing that money Number 15, and this is a, this is a daunting one.

I hope nobody on this podcast, uh, is in this camp, but eight in 10 Americans added nothing to their emergency fund. So Bankrate reported that approximately 80% of Americans did not contribute to an emergency savings during 2025, and only 47% reported being able to cover a $1,000 emergency in savings, and only 29% had more credit card debt than emergency savings.

And here's where the problem is with this, okay? Any single unexpected event, if you do not have an emergency fund, will absolutely sink your financial life, and you will go back into debt again. You'll go back into credit card debt, or you'll go back further into debt, or you're gonna be calling up your parents, or you're gonna be calling up your friends and asking to borrow money.

And this, my friends, is the vicious cycle that people fall into when you don't have cash on hand protecting your finances. Having cash is powerful. Many people are like, "Well, my cash is just sitting there. What am I supposed to do with this cash? It's not growing fast enough." No, cash is protecting you.

Having an economic moat surrounding your finances allows you to build wealth. It allows you to take those dollars and put them towards wealth-building activities. So while the cash that's sitting around your economic moat may not be the highest producing cash, it is one of the things that is allowing you to be able to build wealth.

Because if you don't have that, and one big expense pops up, it is going to derail your financial life long term. And so you need the emergency fund. You need to have it in place, and you need to make sure it is in cash in something like a high yield savings account. Now, my favorite places to have a high yield savings account, we will link down below in the show notes that you can check that out.

This is gonna help you tremendously when it comes to just thinking through the location of where you want to have that in. SoFi, Ally, there's a bunch of great places to keep it, but some of my favorite ones we will link down below in the show notes. Number 16, and this is becoming increasingly concerning to me, Americans bet $166.9 billion on sports in one year.

So Americans legally wagered approximately $166.9 billion on sports last year. That represented an 11% increase from the year before, and sportsbooks retained approximately $16.96 billion in revenue from those specific bets. Now, research examining sports betting legalization also found that net household investments declined by nearly 14% in the studied settings, meaning there's a direct correlation between the folks who bet and how much they're actually investing.

And for each additional $1 spent on sports betting, investment account contributions declined by approximately $2 in the study's estimate. It's just unbelievable. Among financially constrained households, investment activity declined approximately 41%. Now let me give you a direct example of this, okay?

Let's say, for example, someone who was investing $200 per month moved that from investments to betting, okay? And they did that over the course of 30 years at a hypothetical 8% annual rate of return. They could have accumulated approximately $298,000 if they would've invested those dollars. But instead, they wasted it on sports betting.

And sure, you're gonna have some hits. It's gonna go back and forth. But in reality, the house always wins. Again, look at this. $16.96 billion in revenue from the, that betted number was exactly how much they had. So sure, they're paying out some, but they're also, for the most part, winning every single time.

So if you are foregoing investing your money to go out and sports bet, boy oh boy, is that a big problem, my friend. And I really want you to refocus and think about your retirement and your long-term wealth building plan. We'll have a full episode on that coming up soon Number 17 is that buy now, pay later is being used for groceries.

In fact, twenty-nine percent of buy now, pay later users reported using loans for groceries. That compares with twenty-five percent one year earlier and fourteen percent two years earlier. Among buy now, pay later users earning a hundred thousand dollars or more, thirty-three percent reported using the service for groceries, and forty-seven percent reported making at least one late payment in the previous year.

And sixty-eight percent said buy now, pay later encouraged them to spend more than they otherwise would have. Buy now, pay later is not your friend. It is not helpful. It is not something that you should be doing. And in fact, you really need to make sure that you avoid it at all costs. I would say one of our hard rules for buy now, pay later is to avoid it.

Avoid it at all costs because it can get you in some sticky situations. If you do not pay off the amount that you borrowed, those interest rates become higher and higher and higher as time goes on, and you can get yourself into some really, really bad situations. Now, it makes the individual purchases look affordable by breaking them up into smaller payments.

But that, in reality, is not how this works. You're still paying the same am- exact amount, and so most people are looking for instant gratification, and that's not what I want for most of you out there. Number 18 is America's car debt crisis, okay? One in five new car buyers has at least a $1,000 payment, and 20.3% of new vehicle buyers who financed purchases in Q2 of 2026 took on monthly payments of $1,000 per month.

That tied the previous record. And 6.3% of financed used car purchases also carried payments of $1,000 or more. And the average finance amount for a used vehicle climbed to $30,414. Now, a $1,000 monthly payment equals $12,000 per year before insurance, gas, repairs, maintenance, and registration. That is a lot of money to be putting towards a depreciating asset.

But it gets even worse because there's a lot of buyers, specifically on pickup trucks, who are underwater. The average neg- negative equity among traded in vehicles include the Chevy Silverado 1500, which is $8,516, the Ford F-150, $8,417. And five popular full-size pickups reportedly average more than $8,300 in negative equity, which is wild the amount of, uh, that is happening.

And trucks are costing a lot more than just regular standard cars, and so that's a lot of times why this is happening. But here's-- it gets even worse. Nearly one-third of trade-ins are underwater. 30.9% of buyers trading in a vehicle during Q1 2026 owed more than what it was worth. So I get a lot of flack for our 24/12/10 rule because I say put 20% down.

Why do I say that? 30.9% of buyers trading in vehicles in Q1 2026 owed more than it was worth because they didn't put 20% down. They are underwater on the vehicle. The average negative equity was $7,183. And many times these were approximately four-year-old vehicles rather than nearly new cars. So they have negative equity on cars that are four years old.

That is crazy. If you have to trade in an underwater vehicle, you have to have the cash to cover the difference. And so in reality, you're still paying the down payment just later on down the line. But here's the worst part, is rolling negative equity into another car is also expensive because the average payment on new loans that included rollover negative equity reached $944 per month.

That is $167 more than the industry average. And those buyers were projected to pay an average of $16,270 in interest over the life of their loans on that depreciating asset. So almost the cost of another car, a used car over the life of that loan. So this is just another thing that you've gotta be cautious with your vehicles.

Drive them longer, get them fixed. Making sure that you do it in that way is gonna help you win with cars. We have tons of episodes on how to buy a car the right way. Making sure that you do this the right way is super, super important. Well, listen, those are the 18 scary money stats of 2026. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode.

Again, not everything is doom and gloom. There's a lot of positivity when it comes to building wealth in this economy that we will be talking about in future episodes, so make sure you subscribe to these episodes. But I wanna talk about some of the shortcomings. I wanna talk about ways that you can solve some of these problems if you are falling into these problems.

And if you have questions, if you're in any of these situations and you have questions, please reach out to me. My goal is to help as many of you as I possibly can learn how to build wealth. That is my calling. That is what I'm called on this earth to do, and I wanna help as many of you as possible do that.

Also, if you are interested in doing group coaching with me every single week, we have Master Money Academy. Master Money Academy is the place where we have all of our courses. We do group coaching. We have a community of people who are all working towards building wealth, and honestly, it's one of the most affor- affordable communities out there.

So definitely check that out in the link down below in the show notes. Also, if you wanna work with me one-on-one, feel free to reach out to me, and we will see if you are a good fit for that or if you qualify for that. So truly appreciate each and every single one of you. Thank you so much for being here, and we will see ya on the next episode