By accessing this website, you acknowledge that Edmunds and its third party business partners may use cookies, pixels, and similar technologies to collect information about you and your interactions with the website as described in our
Privacy Statement, and you agree that your use of the website is subject to our
Visitor Agreement.
Comments
There remains a huge embrace of the words "free trade", although most who embrace it don't realize what it costs. Free trade isn't free. That's why the US is so big on globalization.
A lot of them were in the Jobs Bank making nothing but still collecting the big money. Now it is time for them to pay up. You cannot squeeze the golden goose forever and not kill him. The smart ones saved a bunch when they were making a $100k per year. So this crash of the auto industry will not hurt them so much.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\- \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Within 20 year the 70 part of that split will be correct. I feel there will be more than 3% at the top however. We'll see.
The "good" UAW workers out there, and there are many of them, were worth what they were being paid. I spent 1996 managing GM UAW workers and felt 1/3 of them were worth the money. It probably hasn't changed that much.
The union was too powerful for their own good and protected the "other" 1/3 that should have been fired on the spot. A sad situation indeed. The middle group were average workers just trying to do their job and often got caught up in the Pro-Union movement, probably against their better judgement.
Many of these people will suffer needlessly and I do believe if you could magically rid yourself of the bad apples there would be hope. Hope is something in short supply right now.
What do you mean, "it won't be long"?
I recently retired from IT, where outsourcing began fully 20 years ago, when high-priced London programming jobs were shipped to Ireland. (People are always surprised to learn that Ireland, not India, pioneered outsourcing.)
By the mid 90s, high wage costs in Ireland & improved telecommunications opened the way for India. My employer shipped a bunch of jobs from New York to India, only to ship many jobs from India to Florida a few years later. By the time I left, senior management had concluded that Florida represented the best overall value & was concentrating most new hiring there. (India has only a few really good technical schools, & wages for grads of those schools have been climbing at the rate of 15% per year.)
That's how it goes. Some jobs go overseas, some come back to the States. New jobs are created - some here, some elsewhere. It's a dynamic process, & you can't fence it in with legislation.
In some ways, outsourcing helped me. I could dump tedious maintenance chores on the offshore team & reduce the number of 3 AM phone calls. Outsourcing also pushed me to sharpen my skills & make myself more valuable. I can't say that I felt threatened by it. I learned to live with it & I managed to make a comfortable living in the process.
In any case, it's not going away. Once technology makes a practice possible, no one wants to give it up. That's been true since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Would you give up broadband & go back to dial-up?
After WWII, Argentina tried to protect jobs by sealing itself off from the rest of the world. The result: stagnation, skyrocketing inflation & living standards that fell from first world to third world levels in less than a generation. No thanks.
As I said before, the government should level the playing field between unions and business. The current situation shows what happens when unions have too much power. Management was weak, but realistically, it was hard to lock employees out while unions could target one company against the others at will. Other unions can honor their picket lines, but businesses cannot coordinate in these situations at all. In the earlier part of the 20th century we also saw how business screwed employees when unchecked. The key is balance and a level playing field.
jimbres - I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but have one caution. America seems to think it can rely on a service economy. I think over time most white collar work will move with manufacturing. So its not just IT, but finance, human resources, engineering, etc. I find it hard to envision a strong America without manufacturing. Some areas may better belong overseas, but there need to be some within the country as well. China and India will be able to do banking and insurance just as well as the US over time, same goes for most things. If the US doesn't have some manufacturing strengths, I fail to see how it thrives long term. Where we currently excel, such as technology, we greedily sell it out to make quarterly short term Wall Street goals sacrificing long term strategic advantages. China shrewdly requires technology transfer for manufacturing and distribution rights in their country. As we start to flail, we cut costs in both industry and our schools, further eroding out long term to meet short term needs. Many say Wall Street is our strength, but I'm beginning to see it as a weakness and competitive disadvantage. Adam Smith is nice theory, but I don't think total reliance on pure capitalism will prevail long term. The world is far too complicated and there are too many other interests at play.
I admire that, together, the GM team failed! GM and C's failure is as American as Apple Pie, Ponzi Schemes and Corporate Greed...sooner or later, the pendulum swings back. They made real products, all right...the kind that dwindled in the market.
Now, there are 6 retirees for 1 active worker supporting the retirement fund of the UAW. Looks like another Ponzi Scheme is needed to fund this group...
Regards,
OW
I have to believe the upper management at GM and in the UAW both knew what they were doing would come crashing down. You have to wonder if the UAW leadership was honest with the sheep about the whole scheme? They probably just counted on blaming everything and everyone but themselves.
You seem to think there is a free lunch. Its no secret that Walmart employees cost taxpayers about $2000 a year each. Walmart plans to add 22,000 more this year to the 35,000 they added last year. Just because they don't bill you directly , doesn't mean it isn't a cost. Where is the outrage? Thank God, Barak is working on this non sense of hidden cost.
As for the United States being the bankers for the world, as has been suggested by past globalization folks, we now can laugh. How retarded is it to pay these fools, whom are non value added folks, six figures and then try to demonize the hard working UAW members as indolent duffers? Look at the rape of your 401K and see who is in your pocket.
Seems to me the greedy folks in the health care industry. Which other country spends more for health care and receives less? Little wonder the jobs are being shipped overseas. We seem to think in black and white, failing to see they whole picture. Then again when we see the whole picture, its but a piece/tile of the large puzzle.
That is chump change compared to what the illegals cost US each year. Walmart has about 2,000,000 employees world wide. We are providing free education and healthcare to a minimum of 10 million illegals and as many as 30 million.
Again you are trying to divert attention from the real issue. And that is over paid and under worked UAW unskilled labor. Plus the gold plated health care that has buried GM and Chrysler under so much debt they will never recover even with constant infusions of tax dollars.
Maybe so, but they sure have good prices on Mobil 1!
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
Outsourcing makes the most business sense when the dollar is strong, but our government is running the largest peacetime budget deficits in history, with no end in sight, & that can only push down the value of the dollar. The weaker dollar will also help drive up energy costs, thereby making it more expensive to manufacture stuff 10,000 miles away & then ship it to American customers. When energy prices spiked last year, we saw renewed interest in reducing freight costs by manufacturing close to customers. You can expect to see much more of that as we enter an era of permanently expensive energy.
I even expect to see a lot more manufacturing jobs move from the Euro zone to the US. That $25/hour American worker is a screaming bargain next to his $60/hour unionized German counterpart. Partly for this reason, the future of manufacturing in Western Europe is much bleaker than it is in North America.
The bad news is that we Americans will probably respond to higher energy costs by buying cheaper cars & keeping them longer. (I used to keep my cars for 3 to 4 years. Now I keep them for 8 to 10 years - even longer, in some cases.) So no matter what happens, our auto industry is fated to shrink. That would be true even if all foreign competition were to magically disappear.
Well considering the quality of people they have working in the supercenters I feel fortunate they are only costing us tax payers $2,000/yr and I thank Walmart for employing them. Last time I was at a Walmart, the cashier was trying to figure out how to scan the divider I had between my order and the person behind me, that's pretty damn sad. Without Walmart many of these people would probably need 100% government support.
The real problem is we have over 1 million high school drop outs every year. Who's going to employ them? Not the UAW anymore, I'd hope they at least want a HS diploma. Unfortunately it's jail or a low paying retail type job.
I've worked retail and I know what the level of talent is at that level, pretty bad. You'd be shocked at how many applicants would fail a basic math test on giving change.
My company told it's union workers that their German counterparts were less than half as expensive, or in other words, three times as productive. Some of that was the currency rates. That was a couple years ago. This year, they told the Union workers that they each lost the company $40,000. All 3,000 of them combined to lose the company $120 Million. I laughed because the next thing they told the union was that they had to contribute to their healthcare costs. The Union guys shouted out "NO, we are protected by a 4 yr contract". I figure they make about $55k a year each so the company only got about 2.5 hrs of work out of them per day for them to EACH lose the company $40,000 a year. Do these mgmt folk hear themselves?
They also told the press that N.A. ops lost 2 or 3 hundred million in 2008. Then they explained to salary folk that they didn't really lose that money. The figure was what would have happened if they lived off borrowed money like their peers do. What kind of bookeeping is that?
That was exactly my argument with Rocky. He thinks they should all be union making $25 per hour. I told him the people they hire would be out on the street if WalMart was paying those kind of wages. They could get college grads for that amount.
Regards,
OW
Greed builds a house of cards and it eventually crumbles WHEREVER it rears it's ugly head.
Social Security is another Ponzi Scheme that will ultimately crumble.
The UAW is now a quasi-hedge fund/auto owner. Now let's see how long they last! Perhaps Bernie can run GM from jail...I hear it's going to be more cozy than his Manhattan penthouse.
Regards,
OW
MODERATOR /ADMINISTRATOR
Find me at kirstie_h@edmunds.com - or send a private message by clicking on my name.
2015 Kia Soul, 2021 Subaru Forester (kirstie_h), 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 (mr. kirstie_h)
Review your vehicle
The middle class will have NO TROUBLE if it simply lives in the middle class...the problem was that they overextended themselves by faking the upper class when they leased Mercedes they could not afford (Buick wasn't good enough, it had to be a Benz), bought houses with subprime mortgages they could not afford (2000 sq ft wasn't good enough, it had to be 4500 sq ft on a lake), bought Sub Xero refrigerators they could not afford (Kenmore wasn't good enough) and so on and so on...
If normal capitalism had been left to its own, the subprime mortgages would NOT exist, as they would have had to prove their income to get a mortgage...but the gov't stepped in and forced banks to loan the money to unqualified borrowers or else ACORN and Jesse Jackson would have protested racism...capitalism is NOT the problem, the gov't caused the problem and they are now the ones trying to fix what they refuse to admit they caused...
The middle class would be fine if they just lived within their means...now that the whole thing has blown up, everybody worries about the disappearance of the middle class...it will do fine, but it only has itself to blame for this, as the entire loan structure of the US was based on overvalued real estate, just like Japan in 1990...
The UAW has also done their part...their wage demands for unskilled labor, combined with poor workmanship and lousy work habits (Jobs Bank) caused people to desert the Big 3 in droves...now they are looking around like the idiots they are and asking "who, me?"......it was they who reduced productivity to a crawl, and their legacy costs are, simply, unsustainable...they scream when they had to pay a lousy co-pay on their doctor visits, and when they actually had to CONTRIBUTE to their health insurance premiums they HOWLED like a dog being eaten alive, when the rest of the nation has made these payments for years...
If you worry for the middle class, they did it to themselves...they lived on credit they did NOT have, owing their last dime of their weekly paycheck QUITE VOLUNTARILY, and the minute they lost an hour of overtime, their house of cards began to crumble...they often bought "investment" real estate with no money down, because some TV program told them that tenants would line up to rent from them, until the tenants, who were overextended on THEIR Mercedes, failed to pay rent...and they saw that program on $150/moth satellite TV that they also could not afford, but they just HAD to have 300 channels and 12 million NFL games every Sunday...where were the brains of those middle class people you now worry about???...they did this to themselves...
If the middle class decreases, it was 100% self inflicted...if the overpaid $100K UAW folks had any brains (yeah, an oxymoron if ever there was one, UAW and brains in the same sentence) they would have stashed some of that money and will live like kings when the storm is over...
One last point...as a BK attorney, I am amazed at the number of people who surrender time shares in their BK...some of these time shares they paid upwards of $15K-25K, just for the ability to reserve a week in a condo on the beach!!!...why not just rent a hotel for a week and be done with it each year???...and, to a person, they tell me that they tried to sell the time share, but nobody offered them over $1000.00 for something they paid $25 grand for...where the hell were THEIR brains???...and some people own 2 or 3 time shares that they are paying on...if they had invested that money maybe they could be financially independent, but they wasted it on a lousy scam...so when THAT part of the middle class disappears, don't blame China, or globalization, or Bush...blame the idiot who spent their money on worthless crap...
The middle class is in danger because the middle class has acted stupid for 25 years, and the house of cards is crumbling...it ain't China, folks, it is stupid Americans who spent money they never had on things they could not afford, simply because "I WANT THAT"
Just thinking about all the soon to be out of work UAW members and retirees with no health care. All is not lost. There are plenty of jobs available in WASHINGTON DC.
Boom Town
Washington is awash in money.
At least there's one place in America that's wearing like Teflon through the recession: Washington, D.C. Most corners of the economy may be struggling, but in the nation's capital it's boom times, baby.
According to new data, the area's unemployment rate dropped to 5.6% in April from 5.9% in March. This is the second consecutive month of improvement for Washingtonians, and it's leagues from the national unemployment rate, which hit 9.4% in May.
In a speech to GWI's conference last week, former venture capitalist and now Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia saw nothing but green for most of Washington's public-private economy. "The federal government's level of activity in the economy is unprecedented," he said, adding that new stimulus projects and investments in green technology in particular look like a jackpot for the region. As Mr. Warner put it to the Washington Business Journal, "It helps to be where the money is." Or better yet, where everyone else's money gets sent.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124458850503399823.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
Are you listening Rocky? Here is your chance to get in and mix it up.
I'm sorry, but that is certainly a rather broad generalization. Did you mean this to come off so arrogant and condescending? I'm guesing you're a lawyer?
Yeah, I agree. Now I think a lot of people who are in dire straights right now, did it to themselves by living beyond their means. But there are plenty of other ways to get yourself in hot water. Get sick or hurt and run up some big medical bills. Get on the wrong end of a divorce. Or just get laid off in a bad economy, and not be able to find another job before you blow through your emergency fund.
I didn't live beyond my means, yet, I still got hurt financially. Well, okay, I really didn't need that second 1979 New Yorker that I paid $500 for, so maybe I flaunted it a bit, as well! :P
A lot of things are also going up faster than the "official" inflation rate. Property taxes, gasoline, utilities, health insurance, etc. I think many people who are firmly planted in the middle class/upper middle class segment will be okay, as long as they don't live beyond their means. But people who are in the lower extremes, on the edge of middle class, could drop out pretty easily.
I think most recessions tend to widen the divide between rich and poor, and stretch the middle class. When times are rough, the rich can afford to invest more, when prices are low, and then make out like a bandit when the economy recovers. But the lower classes can't do that. They have to watch their portfolios take a dive, and just hope for a rebound of what they already have when the economy turns around. But it's not like they have tons of money to sink into the market and go "bargain hunting". Or worse, a financial bind comes up while prices are depressed, and they have to sell an asset at a loss, forever losing out on potential future gains.
Coordination - Would it have been illegal for Ford, GM and Chrysler to coordinate and lock down all their facitlities whenever one company was struck by the UAW? Or, was it mainly self-interest of the 2 non-struck companies to keep their production going? If no laws against Big 3 collaboration, then we could have had a goose/gander situation. UAW could have been checked decades ago.
But of course. Man does not live by Mopar alone. :shades
The globalization talk is always interesting. It's been my experience that once a company abandons its initial factory location that it never stops hunting for cheaper and cheaper. We used to have a couple of rubber mills where I grew up. One moved to South Carolina for cheaper labor and the other moved to Tennessee. Neither exist anymore in this country. If you can still find an Ace comb this was one of the products the one mill made. They were hard rubber and made in New Jersey. Now they are plastic and made in Asia. The parent company got sold to Asian interests as well.
So that's where Trojans used to come from! Sorry, couldn't resist. :P
The consolidation of wealth as seen today, and the growing underclass as seen today, has nothing to do with individual materialism. It's a guarantee in a service based society - the socio-economic gap is greater now than at any time since before the depression. This isn't because of people maxing out their credit cards.
In the big picture, the UAW as an individual organization has little impact on the fate of the middle class.
If they lived conservatively that would mean something...but so many have luxury cars and homes 3 times the size of mine (mine is 1700 sq ft on 1/2 acre), as tho life DEMANDED that they live high on the hog...add to that the vacation home and condo on the beach and it is a recipe for disaster...
It all held together while real estate values went UP...but people with no foresight never thought that real estate could go DOWN...most of their "investments" were speculative, almost like commodity futures...
You just can't handle that the blame for MUCH, not all, rests with the people themselves...painful truth...so many folks had property they could not afford that depended on tenant income...
This is not arrogance, this is a hard look at what folks did to THEMSELVES by living over their heads basing the entire house of cards on 10-20% annual inflation in real estate values...when reality set in, that land does NOT go up that fast, the house of cards collapsed overnight...
I do not know who said this..."things will continue to go on forever,,,until they stop"
This was a merry go round that sucked in millions of people, and pointing out that they only hurt themselves is not arrogance, it is truth-telling...
Obviously you do not believe anyone is responsible for their actions and stupidities, do you???...blame Bush, blame CNBC, blame somebody, anybody but the eprson who signed on the bottom line...
That is the downside of capitalism...we MUST acknowledge the freedom to make stupid decisions and fail, because that is what they did...
To some degree, I think materialism has contributed to the growing underclass. Not the whole cause of it, but certainly a contributing factor. When you think about it, the very things that make us look wealthy...expensive cars, houses, clothes, exotic vacations, etc...actually keep us poor. Unless we can truly afford them, which most people can't.
So many people keep putting up this front that they're affluent, but in reality it's just keeping them poor. However, all that money they're spending to look wealthy has to go somewhere. And it is...to those who are already wealthy! The CEOs with the golden parachutes, big business owners, politicians who have their hands in everybody's pocket, etc.
Also, the rich people find ways to evade having to pay taxes. The poor people don't have any money to pay taxes. So when it comes time to bail out all these failures and such with taxpayer dollars, the bulk of it is coming from the middle class. So the fiscally responsible are still going down with the irresponsible. And worse, when my neighbor's house gets foreclosed on, it reduces my property value. When all these mortgages get defaulted on and the banks start hoarding money, it makes it harder for me to get a loan. And then when the gov't starts whining about not bringing in enough revenue and decides to raise taxes, it just perpetuates the cycle.
...which is why it is so silly that the supporters try to make the fate of the UAW the be-all and end-all of the US economy.
While this plays well to the masses and there is some truth to it (exceptions), the vast majority of taxes are paid by the wealthy. The bottom 50% of incomes pay a very tiny fraction of the taxes.
I tend to agree with some of the other posters - that the middle class has, for the most part, simply been left behind financially. This is not through any fault of their own. Their wages have not kept up with expenses, be they property taxes, income taxes, transportation expenses, medical costs, college costs, etc.
It is trully amazing how many people can't distinguish between "I need", and "I want". All when you hear them saying they'd rather buy something nice and enjoy it, blah, blah, blah. I always say - sure if you can trully afford that item, by all means buy it. But 20 year loan on RV or boat, or 5 year loan on TV is not what I call "can afford". There is nothing wrong with credit, but everything needs to have its limits. New TV in three or six payments - no problem. New car in 3-4 years, OK. Five is a stretch, but if the interest rate is low (below market) and some cash is already in the bank, why not. But people do just about opposite to that.
Even after all that meltdown, one of my coworkers still can't even understand a concept and necessity of downpayment for a house mortgage. He recently said something like "I'd rather have money in the bank", to which I say "but you actually don't, not to mention if you did, you'd spend it on the furniture, which I don't call having money in the bank".
2018 430i Gran Coupe
Yeah, I knew about that. However, I wonder what percentage of those "wealthy" are really just "middle class"? Of course, it all depends on how you define "wealthy" and "middle class". :P
A lot of it also depends on where you live. I'm sure if I could move to someplace in Appalachia or Detroit, yet keep my salary, I'd be considered "wealthy". But where I live, I'm probably in the 4th cheapest house on my street, and the other three are tear-down specials. :surprise:
People are so mathematically challeneged that they can't understand that even at incomes of $50K+/year you still can't afford a $100 shirt or $500 jacket, $30K+ car and save for house, retirement, college and rainy day. Lots of people still think they can. That's why Marsha will have his job...
2018 430i Gran Coupe
Bingo! The middle class didn't create globalization, nor create all the Wall Street speculation driving up commodity prices beyond logical supply and demand equilibrium. However, the destruction of the middle class may have some serious impacts down the road on the aggregate wealth of the well to do as fewer people has disposable income. Increasing poverty also leads to despair and unrest. Not a pretty picture if we don't start turning things around.
In a way it seems like the means to an end...spend yourself broke, then have the "free market" globalists destroy the wage structure, makes people easier to control when mobility is curtailed.
Exactly wrong. I believe in personal responsibility. If you make $50K+, have health insurance (half of people in US do - it's median income), there no excuse. There is plenty of opportunity. In fact, people have it practically handed to them in this country. All they need to do learn a little applied math and think a little how much is really enough and how much they really can afford. Instead they defer their judgment to others (marketers, peer pressure) and then blame those evil corporations and globalists, when tougher times come.
2018 430i Gran Coupe
Heck, I think 70% of the cars I've owned have cost less than $2500! :P
Can the UAW survive in its new role? (CNN(
Globalization - a race to the bottom, nothing more.
Remember, they spent their money on things they "had to have" or life would be unbearable...DVD recorders, iPods, iPhones (does anyone really NEED a $600 phone, which is what they cost at initial release time?), Viking stoves from Food Network, cookware from Emeril or Rachel or Wolfgang, Satellite radio, Satellite TV with high speed internet ($150-plus monthly) season tickets to the Falcons, time share in Destin, FL, $5000-plus big screen TVs, in home theaters, BMW or Mercedes, DO I REALLY HAVE TO GO ON???
What this country needs is some humility and reasonbleness on the part of its citizens, to wake up and realize how materialistic we are (nothing wrong with that IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT) and just accept that fact that some things we simply cannot afford...LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS...
So we are threatened with civil unrest because someone will not be able to watch Monday Night Football on a 5 foot screen in his home, as though we have a divine right to have it...
You are expressing the same entitlement atttitude that the UAW had with the Big 3, and it does not work...
This economy will NOT fail if we save some money, it just means that some of the stores that sell unnecessary gadgets will go out of business, some malls will go under, but it will evolve over time...
Linens and Things went under, yet Bed, Bath & Beyond is still here...altho I am in favor of competetion, did we really NEED one of each store within a mile of each other...at any time, did ANYONE see the redundancy in two stores selling the exact same things and wonder which will fail first?
Same things with malls...do we really need one every ten miles...how much can Dillards sell from too many stores???
We are guilty of overconsumption on borrowed money and the chickens have come home to roost...the economy will be fine in due time, but the great pain is going cold turkey...
The UAW is just a small microcosm of the entire US economy, thinking they can have things that are simply unaffordable...reality sucks...
First of all, I don't think going around "laying blame" fixes much of anything - just look at Washington politics!
I can see how dealing with what you see may jade your opinion, but most people don't way overspend, and most don't file bankruptcy either. Further, wealthy people end up blowing money and going into bankruptcy as well as middle and lower class citizens. Look at Wayne Newton, what did he blow something like $60M?
I agree that its not arrogant to candidly point out facts, but assuming that your limited observations of the population represents the entire middle class' personal problems and situation in patently unfair and unrealistic. I guess I just have a more positive and optimistic feeling toward most Americans. I think most of us do not condone the aggregious behavior and self control of those who foolishly blow their money, but that it is also a small portion of the population and it happens in all income strata. I believe a number of bankruptcy filings happen due to uncontrolled actions such as job loss, major health issues, etc. You can be solidly middle class and invest and spend prudently, yet get whacked quickly by these kind of things. Heck, I know a guy who's divorce ended up costing almost 30 grand due to legal fees and a court system that doesn't always apply common sense or logical restraint on the number of hearings and appeals allowed.
It is true, but there is also something called "planning". Somebody with median income should have emergency fund. Ask yourself, how many households have 42"+ Plazma/LCD TV and how many have 6-month emergency fund. I bet the ratio is 5 to 1 or higher. I rest my (and Marsha's) case.
2018 430i Gran Coupe
Have you priced health insurance that is not employer sponsored lately? Do you realize that most health insurance has a lifetime cap and when you exceed that its your nickel? Have you looked at the job market lately?
However, I do agree that people make their decisions on spending and should be responsible. Maybe our high schools need to start teaching everyone economics and business basics?
Valid point, but in their defense, tvs really aren't that expensive anymore unless you go all-out. Back in November I bought a 42" LCD, and I think it was around $850 by the time you throw in taxes and a 5-year extended warranty. Adjusting for inflation, the $379+tax 19" Toshiba tv I bought as a kid back in 1984 was probably about the same price.
I'd really be curious to know what percentage of households DO have an emergency fund that could cover 6 months of living expenses. Heck, or even 3 months!