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Comment by Ayesh | Hacker News Reader

A vague statement. For the expense of staying in a private room and eating out for 2 days in Amsterdam, you can spend a week in Croatia.

This, and the popular news heading you see about Americans not having enough savings are all meaningless. I find the Big Mac index to quite useful. I'm working on a new web site that we try to list a similar a metric (affordability of traveling to each country, factored by the traveler return rate, etc). Comparing EU with countries like Sweden, the Netherlands, France, etc vs Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, is orange vs apples.

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Spending a week in a hotel in Croatia doesn't seem quite so cheap if your salary is paid in Croatia, which is why although the press release doesn't qualify "holiday" it does provide a country by country breakdown indicating that most Romanians and Croatians and very few Swedes feel priced out of an annual holiday. Agreed that your own index sounds like it would be useful data for other reasons.

The more notable thing is just how sharp the downward trend in the number of people saying they were unable to afford a holiday has been. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?query=BOOKMA...

So is it fair to say "the percentage of Europeans who can't afford a 1 week annual holiday is steadily dropping and most recently sits at a low of 28%?"

The starting point for this series is the global financial crisis and the drop seems to be driven mostly by Eastern European countries whose economies have been rapidly growing over that time period.

This news heading is bad because they include 16 years old teenagers in the statistics. A majority of them are living with their parents, attending high school, and obviously having no income. I'd be more likely to agree with the report if it only includes people who are working, or 24 years old and up.

> In 2013 the corresponding proportion was 39.5%.

It's actually a great improvement. Going from 39.5% down to 28% in a mere 6 years (despite the bad statistics counting 16+ years old).

It's worth noting that in many cultures, 16 year olds have modest incomes and 24 year olds are expected to have at least a nominal employment history.

Not that folks under 24 can necessarily afford to finance week-long holidays. But it's not entirely out of the question for young adults going in together on a beach house or something.

Just curious, which European countries have that?

The question was done per-household. I think the assumption is that there are not significant amount of households of <16 year olds.

> and the popular news heading you see about Americans not having enough savings are all meaningless

What? How is it meaningless at all? Because other countries are cheaper?

Edit: To elaborate (since OP hasn't responded yet)... Implying that it means nothing to have no savings because other countries is IMO just wrong. Moving to another country (especially from the states) is difficult and incredibly expensive. It's the same argument for within the states. "Well why don't you just move to somewhere cheaper?"

Because moving is super expensive and if you have no money, and no savings, how are you going to move?

Just pack up all your shit and move to Mexico, right?

Because Americans don't "save" their money in traditional savings accounts anymore. They shove it in investment accounts of varying types (less common) or retirement accounts (more common). When there's an emergency we tend to put it on credit and then use the time that buys to get money out of one of those other accounts and pay down the balance. Even many people who are living paycheck to paycheck are making some sort of 401k contribution which, while not a proper "savings" slush fund, can serve the same purpose of being able to cover an emergency expense if needed.

Americans definitely keep emergency cash in savings accounts or at the worst, money market accounts. I doubt "Americans" as a generalized entity even have investment accounts, outside of whatever tax advantaged account employer offers.

By and large, "Americans" probably just don't have sufficient cash flow to create a decent emergency fund, and/or they lack the discipline.

I would hope that higher earners and higher educated are trying to keep at least 6 months of highly liquid assets available, i.e. cash in savings accounts or money market funds.

> if you have no money, and no savings, how are you going to move?

If you have no money, and no savings, you probably have nearly no stuff too. That means, if you can get a days work at minimum wage, you can afford the cheapest bus trip to almost anywhere on the same continent.

If you want less risk, and can get 3 days work at minimum wage, you can afford a return bus trip incase you can't find work at the destination.

People don't move because they don't want to lose friends and family, not because they can't afford to.

So... people DON'T have savings, but they can travel, so there's really nothing to worry about.

>If you have no money, and no savings, you probably have nearly no stuff too.

I wouldn't bet on that. I know plenty of people who have lots of stuff, high credit card debt, and very little or no savings. It doesn't make sense to save money for retirement when you have any unpaid credit card debt because you'll be losing money, rather than saving it.

Family and friends are a part of affordability. They can provide housing, food, childcare.

Also, how long do you expect it would take to find a job in a new place? You'd need to cover living expenses until your first paycheck, which is an extra 2 weeks after you've successfully found a job.

The kind of job that people new-in-town-with-no-money get typically pay cash.

Being a cleaner for example, garden work, etc. That sort of job you can knock on doors and get there and then, and be paid for 3-4 hours each time. You can probably earn enough to pay for food in the first week (while sleeping under a bridge), and food and a hostel the 2nd week. Proper housing is far harder to get, because it typically requires a big deposit and proof of employment.

This is literally how tons of people end up going homeless. It's a lot harder than just "pack up the few things I have and dip out"

People totally can't afford to move in many cases.

But I've never been that poor to be fair. And I'm guessing you haven't either.

Have you seen how nomadlist.com does this?

I too like the Big Mac index as a relative measure of cost of living the way that most people actually live their lives. I'd be very interested to see your new website once it is ready! Happy to provide some thoughts too if you're still hashing stuff out for it.

The other index should be called a Bankrupcy Index. Which would be a measure of a likelihood you'd go bankrupt or indebted forever, per country. Potentially extended with Credit Index - how likely is an average person to get a loan the size of local house, car or medical bill.

> The popular news heading you see about Americans not having enough savings are...meaningless.

How do you figure?

Because it's entirely fraudulent. The headlines keep claiming that around 40% of Americans can't afford a surprise $400-$500 bill. The actual number is around 12% according to the Fed survey that the headlines are intentionally misleading about. It keeps getting pointed out that the claim is false, however the propaganda value is too sweet so it keeps getting abused.

https://outline.com/rqAedK

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-04/the-40...

https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/report-economic-...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/04/middle-class-doing-ok...

https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-4...

So which one of these is supporting your point and which one is not? I'm guessing the Cato Institute (formerly the Koch Research Foundation) is the one pushing the propaganda.

What's the domain for your web site?

I would absolutely follow that when its available.

The Big Mac index is completely unrelated to savings in a country. You may not understand what these are telling people but that only makes them meaningless to you.

Oh but it is. BigMacParity index can tell you if you can afford the holiday in your country but not in another. I bet most people in EU can actually afford a semi decent holidays in the country they earn in. Obviously not all.

This is essentially a decent measure of "can you take x time of a break, spend a bit and not go bankrupt".

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