50% of Americans Couldn't Come Up with $2000

[Aliantha]

That statistic doesn't surprise me, even if it's not completely proven. I don't know too many people who could come up with 2k without blinking an eye. I know we'd have trouble doing it right now although we'd manage.

I have to say that over the last couple of years, the cost of living here has gone up so much it's just impossible to find the right words to describe it. We're on an above average household income, and yet we're finding we can't save at all anymore, so we're in the midst of making some major changes to how we live. One of those is sacrificing the quality of the food we eat. When you're paying $10/kg for bell peppers, and $6/kg for carrots it's becoming impossible to eat healthy as in, to afford to buy enough fruit and veges to allow everyone their recommended daily intake, which is a guide and the teenagers in our house would eat more than that at the moment. That's not even including buying things like milk and bread and some kind of protien. Fortunately for us, we suppliment that by fishing, but it's still out of control.

I know this isn't america, but it's still a western country.