ST. LOUIS–Americans are feeling significantly high levels of stress and, not surprisingly, financial worries especially around housing are a critical driver.
The new survey of 1,000 U.S. households by Clever has found 61% say their stress is at an all-time high, and 59% say the past 12 months have been the most stressful of their entire lives.”
“Although stress comes from many sources, the data shows financial struggles have the most significant impact on Americans' negative mental state,” Clever said in releasing its findings.
The Overall Findings
Overall, the survey found:
- 5% of Americans are unable to enjoy life because of stress.
- 30% of Americans are not taking any steps to improve their mental health.
- 48% of Americans cry at least once a week.
- 65% of millennials and 64% of Gen Zers say their stress is at an all-time high.
- 59% of Americans say the past year has been the most stressful of their lives.
- A plurality of Americans (45%) consider the 2020s the most stressful decade of the past 60 years.
- 61% of Americans are stressed about their personal finances, and 44% say they've skipped meals to afford bills.
- 80% of Americans are stressed about the cost of living, and 73% are stressed about inflation.
- 64% of millennials are stressed about housing prices.
- 34% of homeowners say they'd be less stressed if they didn't own a home.
Specifics of Finances
The survey of the most common sources of financial stress are:
- Not having enough emergency savings (69%)
- Spending more money than they earn (58%)
- Not having enough money to afford necessities (57%)
- Not having enough money saved for retirement (57%)
- Having less money than friends (53%)
- Paying taxes (51%)
- Medical bills/debt (47%)
- Credit card debt (46%)
- A lack of financial literacy (44%)
Given where they are in their lifespans, not surprisingly 64% of millennials are feeling stress around homebuying, vs. 49% of Baby Boomers.
Nearly half of millennials (44%) say they've skipped meals to afford housing payments at some point — more than double the share of baby boomers (20%) who have done so. Additionally, 45% of Americans — including 50% of Millennials — have taken on extra work to afford housing at one time or another.
Stresses From Homeownership
The Clever survey found 88% of homeowners find some aspect of owning a home stressful, including:
- Maintenance (47%)
- Unexpected expenses (47%)
- The general cost of owning a home (41%)
- Their current mortgage rate (23%)
- Bad neighbors (19%)
- Disliking where they live (18%)
“In fact, a whopping 34% of homeowners say they'd be less stressed if they didn't own a home,” Clever reported.
Stress Among Renters
The survey found 84% of renters are stressed about not owning a home.
“Some homeowners think the grass may be greener as a renter, but most renters (62%) say they'd be less stressed if they were homeowners,” Clever found. “About 84% of renters have been stressed about not owning a home at some point, including 41% who are always or often stressed about not being a homeowner.”
The full survey can be found here.
Feeling the FOMO? We Can Help
The biggest, best and freshest news reporting in credit unions remains free in ’23! Each morning CUToday.info delivers its daily Fresh Today news update offering the latest headlines and breaking news right to your email, with the easy-to-read headlines format allowing you to click on the stories that interest you most in order to learn more.
If you haven’t yet signed up for the new email solution on which CUToday.info has partnered with ResponseGenius, you can do so here. Signing up requires less than one minute of your time—and it’s free!
Please note that after signing up you may need to go to your Spam/Junk folder and mark the morning headlines email as safe. CUToday.info does not provide its list of readers and emails to outside parties, and we will not be contacting you to sell you an extended warranty or sending you any links so you may cash in on an inheritance you didn’t know was coming.
And did we mention it’s free?
Please note and/or make your IT department or email administrator aware the emails will be coming from the domains CUTodayinfo.com and CUTodayinfoReply.com