>there are 35% on the brink of financial disaster.

This seems like a caricature of the opinion of someone who grew up in the Great Depression and never accepted credit cards as legitimate tools.

Saving money from your first good job until you had several months worth of salary was traditional advice, like, in the 1950s.

In the Depression, my grandparents raised rabbits on the farm for food! Should we be concerned that the average person doesn't have any rabbits in reserve and is therefore on the brink of starving to death?