Hacker News Reader

Comment by lorenzhs | Hacker News Reader

Saying that $370 is not a lot of money shows just how far removed the tech bubble is from the rest of the world.

"Four in 10 adults in 2017 would either borrow, sell something, or not be able pay if faced with a $400 emergency expense." https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-repor..., page 21. That's a lump sum expense, not paid over time, but I think it illustrates quite well that $370 is a lot of money for something most people don't even know they need.

View on HN

This is not an unexpected, one-time $370 expense. It's $370 spent over six years.

According to CBS [1], the cheapest city to live in in the US Harlingen, Texas. The Nacho Supreme at Pepe's "homey" Tex-Mex "joint" [2] is $9.95. If you can afford to treat yourself to a plate of those nachos once every two months, then you could have afforded to secure all of your passwords.

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/10-cheapest-places-to-live-... [2]: http://pepesrgv.com/

> then you could have afforded to secure all of your passwords.

You can secure all your passwords for free (with Keepass or Bitwarden for example).

1password doesn't have to justify its price versus not securing your passwords, but versus open-source password managers.

4/10 is surprisingly low. Most of us would borrow to pay a $400 emergency expense. Are there really that many people out there paying with cash or check instead of “borrowing” by paying with credit card?

The question is not if you're carrying $400 in cash, but whether you can afford that expense. A credit card paid off in full is considered cash-equivalent: "When faced with a hypothetical expense of only $400, 59 percent of adults in 2017 say they could easily cover it, using entirely cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement (referred to, altogether, as “cash or its equivalent”)" (from the same page of that report).

The technicality of making the payment by cash or cc is beside the point, the point was that there is not 400 of savings available to immediately pay down the CC

I've read 4/10 a couple of times now, and all I hear is my math teacher yelling "reduce your fraction".

Me too, but when I think of 2/5, it is a little harder to picture. I don't know if that's just because I already let 4/10 get into my head though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com