Paycheck to paycheck: The urgent need for Financial Care

Cost increases for things like housing, college, and healthcare have far outpaced wage growth for decades. The result: Even some American households making more than $200,000 end up living paycheck to paycheck, let alone those trying to get by at or under the average American household income of $69,000.

This article from NPR dives deeply into the topic, with human examples and economic charts showing both the underlying math and the human consequences. It basically amounts to written proof of the quote from Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist Richard Thaler that “People aren’t dumb. The world is hard.”

That’s precisely why we built Brightside, and the category of financial care. We help people navigate the stuff that makes life hard, so they can improve their immediate financial standing and begin to plan for the future.