Hacker News Reader

Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this survey says what they think it says.

"Methodology: This GOBankingRates.com survey posed the question, “How much money do you have saved in your savings account?” to 8,131 people among all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Responses were collected through a Google Consumer Survey conducted from Aug. 15, 2017, to Aug. 17, 2017, and responses are representative of the U.S. online population." [1]

This shows that a lot of people don't have saving accounts. Not that they don't have any savings. For example, they could keep their savings in a checking or money market account. Or as cash.

[1] https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/americans-saving...

View on HN

Agreed, this seems like a disingenuous headline. There are much better surveys that attempt to tackle how much liquidity people have. One I remember from a while back: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/25/the-s...

While it asks the question in a better way, it does actually come up with similar results.

Or in their Bitcoin wallet. I hear it's great for the unbanked.

How does an unbanked person comply with KYC?

You don't need KYC if you want to perform a peer-to-peer transaction. Its only exchanges which convert USD/BTC which require KYC

"Savings account" however is commonly interpreted as including things like a stock market account, and therefore include most investments.

It would not include housing equity and pension savings, but it would include more than just an actual savings account.

Depending on what an expression “obviously means” is how you get unhelpful answers and misinterpretations of the question.

They should have phrased it in multiple ways to clarify what they were asking eg “do you have $1000 ready to spend without incurring further debt? Include checking accounts, savings accounts, money market mutual funds, and any other financial account from which you could withdraw $1000 without penalty within one business day.”

Edit: if you ask me about my “savings account”, I’m going to answer about “things that are explicitly called by the name ‘savings accounts’.” (It’s hard to infer intent without context.) If they want to know about my “[liquid] savings”, they should say that, not some other term of art with a technical meaning.

> "Savings account" however is commonly interpreted as including things like a stock market account, and therefore include most investments.

It is? If posed that question I would've responded like the GP suggested and only thought about what is in the bank account that's called a "savings account" and ignored any investments.

Are you sure that most people would interpret "savings account" to include checking accounts, gold bars stashed under their bed, Schwab accounts, etc? I'm not.

A stock market account would be a brokerage account, and that is very different (practically and legally) from a savings account. For one, a savings account is insured by the FDIC, a brokerage account is not.

Well, for purposes of this question, it would make sense to include the cash in brokerage accounts (along with checking accounts), since that’s very liquid and accessible, and is insured through SIPC:

https://www.sipc.org/for-investors/what-sipc-protects

Varying interpretations of the question cast hopeless doubt on their data & conclusions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com