Is This Happening Where You Are?

if it is, I'm very curious for your thoughts

In the last ten days, something has happened to me five times, a repeating pattern that’s interesting for what it implies.

The pattern looks like this: I go into a local business, attempt to buy something with a debit card, and the debit card rejects. This has happened with both the debit card tied to my checking account in a local credit union and the debit card tied to my Credit Karma Spending account. (More on Credit Karma below.) It has happened at Wal-mart, and at small local businesses.

I panic, thinking something has gone terribly wrong, and immediately pull up the account in question via that bank’s app. I verify that there is in fact sufficient money to cover the purchase in my account, so the card should not have rejected.

I am embarrassed, and afraid of angering the people waiting in line behind me, so I put the purchase on a credit card.

On the one hand, this isn’t a big deal. It takes a few seconds, with electronic banking, to sequester the amount I just charged in my savings account, and pay off the credit card as soon as the charge posts.

On the other hand, what the hell? I live in the United States of America and I am now regularly having trouble spending my money.

Staffing Shortages

In general, I don’t go many places. When I do, I now nearly always check before I leave. So many local restaurants and stores are closing at random times, with apologetic handwritten signs on the door talking about staffing shortages.

This has happened at two gas stations, one CVS, one Subway, one Chili’s, and one local pizza restaurant. The latter eventually closed for remodeling, and the website has a sadly hopeful message for customers about how the staffing shortage just got to be too much and they hope to reopen.

On one of the audio-only episodes of his excellent podcast, my friend Josh talked about how our societal infrastructure is coming apart.

What Do You Think Is Happening?

Businesses cannot get enough staff to be open regular hours, but I’m not sure why.

I don’t think that low pay is the problem, or at least not the main problem. The pizza restaurant I mention? They advertised on Craigslist for a long time. They were offering $19 an hour to load and unload their industrial dishwasher. I earn more than that at my job, but I seriously considered whether my shoulder could handle ten hours a week of that. That would be over $600 a month after taxes, which would speed up my progress on paying off my student loans noticeably.

The gas stations pay $16-$18 an hour, and the workers stand around or even sit, reading books or playing on their phones. This is a very low crime area. If I didn’t need my weekends for therapy, writing, and math tutoring, I would absolutely consider a weekend job at one of these places.

$19 an hour is not enough to comfortably house and feed a family in this area, no. (Though anyone with kids who earned $19 an hour here would qualify for all kinds of government assistance anyway.) But between high school students, college students, single adults with roommates, single adults without roommates who want a side income for whatever reason, retirees who want to get paid to get out of the house a little, and similar employee scenarios—restaurants having to close because $19 an hour isn’t enough to get someone to load and unload a dishwasher seems insane to me.

I just don’t understand how people are surviving, if so few people are working.

For awhile I thought that people must have stockpiled their COVID money. When restaurants and such were shut down, people got unemployment plus $600 a week. The government program that paid it allowed people to claim it for up to 79 weeks. If someone pocketed every penny of that bonus and drew it for the full 79 weeks, they would have $47,400.

I doubt anyone, particularly anyone in the income bracket that tends to correlate with having a job that can’t be done from home (and thus getting the unemployment in the first place), has perfect fiscal discipline. I suspect that cars, computers, phones, plasma TVs, etc., are where most of that extra money went.

But suppose they did. Suppose someone saved every penny of it. It’s been 15 months since the programs ended (September 2021, as far as I can tell).

I am surprised that businesses continue to struggle, to the point of having to close early. These hypothetical unicorns of fiscal discipline who had $47,400 saved up, fifteen months ago, and have been living on it since in order to avoid needing to work, are surely seeing that balance dwindle enough, now, that a job should start to be seeming like a good idea….I would think?

What am I missing? What do you think is going on? Are you seeing this in your area? If so, please comment and say where you’re from, if you’re comfortable doing so.

I really want to understand what’s happening. Thanks in advance for any insight you can offer.

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More on Credit Karma

If you don’t know about Credit Karma, it’s amazing. They give you free access to your Transunion and Equifax scores, which they update daily. You can also see what day of the month each account reports to the credit bureaus, so if you need to increase your score as quickly as possible because you’re going to have to go buy a car, for example, you can easily see where a decreased balance will help you the most and soonest. They also offer both savings and debit card accounts, with contests attached. Anyone who makes an automatic deposit to their Credit Karma savings account gets entered for a $20,000 monthly prize, and they randomly reimburse debit card purchases.

This has been both convenient and motivational for me, as I tend to use my Credit Karma accounts for major purchases. Right now I’m saving into my Credit Karma savings account for my next dental surgery. When I hit the goal, I’ll use the app to move it to the debit account, which I’ll swipe at the dentist’s office. It’s easy, convenient, and there’s always a chance that I’ll get lucky with the timing and get the money back. They also match you with offers based on your reported income and credit score. They found me significantly cheaper auto and renter’s insurance, as just one example.

If you don’t use Credit Karma, I highly recommend it!

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