Top 10 Mind-Blowing Money Stats (2025)

0:00Brian Preston:We've got some brand new money stats for 2025 that we think will absolutely floor you. Brent, I am so excited about this because the world of personal finance isn't always super juicy, but sometimes we hear a stat that absolutely blows our minds. And those stats are what we're going to share with you guys today. So love them, hate them. These 10 stats will absolutely shock you. And some towards the end are downright mind blowing. So be sure to stick around. But with that, Bo? Let's jump right in.

0:38Brian Preston:So Brian, this first stat is an oldie, but a baddie. It's one that just drives us nuts. We know that right now, according to Bankrate, 59 % of Americans could not come up with$1 ,000 for an emergency. Yeah, I think it's important for all of our financial mutants to know and remember, this is why we bring it up every year. Your emergency reserves is your protection or your barrier from what life throws at you so you don't have to make desperate decisions. So make sure you plan accordingly. Yeah. So how do I do this? What do I have to figure out how to make temporary sacrifices? How can I live on just a little bit less than I make today so that I can have a cushion in place so that my financial life does not get derailed?

1:21Brian Preston:Because far too often we see people that live way too lean and then one of those unknown unknown comes happens and they just start swiping. They just start racking up the credit card debt. You do not want to be in that situation. So how you protect yourself, obviously protect you, you know, make the temporary sacrifices, living on less than you make. And then also don't sleep on the fact that your financial order of operations is great and making sure you know exactly how much to have to start that emergency funds with step one, highest deductible coverage. So if you want to have a free copy of your own financial order of operations.

1:55Brian Preston:You go to moneyguy.com slash resources, download it, and you will know and be equipped to know exactly what to do with your next dollar. All right, that's the first. Are you ready for the next one, Brian? Yeah, let's go. All right, mind-blowing stat number nine, and this one, this one is not an oldie, but this is a frustrating one because it has come on the seam rampantly. The average user of buy now, pay later has borrowed almost$4 ,000. dollars and here's a captain obvious statement a majority of these people nearly half of them have reported at least one financial problem and here let's talk about these there is 24 percent said hey because we use this buy now pay later we have regrets about overspending how about the 16 percent that missed the payment or how about the 15 percent once again being pushed by consumption in our society regretted the entire purchase and what is buy now pay later is this idea of okay I don't need to actually spend money on this thing today.

2:54Brian Preston:I can just make four easy payments of$19.99 or five easy payments. So it allows the barrier to be so thin between me consuming today or waiting to consume to tomorrow. And what's absolutely wild is that 49 % of consumers, one out of two people in America will use buy now, pay later in 2025. And 20 % said that they're doing this every single month. There is a new loan being incepted every month. It is wild. Brown, we did a quick little survey of our team here and said, okay, all of you guys here on the Money Guy team, who uses buy now, pay later? And the answer was zero. That means out there, there are groups of people, cohorts of people where everyone is doing it and that is not good.

3:42So the fact that none of the financial mutants on our content team have ever used this means is there's a lot of general Americans that are following this. So I think let's talk about some key takeaways. Convenient debt, because that's what this is. This is purchases of convenience, and they're making it that much easier, seeming like this is a bridge of opportunity. Convenient debt is still bad debt.

4:02Brian Preston:And people say, Brian, there's no interest rate. It's not like a credit card. It's different. If you're someone who's doing buy now, pay later, so that you can pay a small amount now and not have to pay a full amount, there's a good chance that you can't afford that thing you're buying and frankly if you can't afford it don't buy it one of the keys to being able to build towards financial your financial future is mastering deferred gratification the idea that i don't need it today i can save up for something and i can have that something tomorrow yeah and then here's another point you got to get the small things right i think about the fact of when i'm trying to to to grow my financial mutants i'm telling you, hey, make small, good decisions for yourself.

4:46And the first thing you do is have discipline work for you. This buy now, pay later is very dangerous for you because it not only works against that component of discipline, but it takes away that time that money could be working for you. So don't let these small things, because that's why it's so dangerous. It feels so little that this can't hurt me.

5:08Brian Preston:The average loan right now is only$140. And so people are thinking, oh, this is so easy. It's so simple. It's so small. It's not significant. But we know 80 % of personal finance is behavioral. So if you begin doing these bad behaviors, figuring out these bad habits, they will follow you through the rest of your financial life. All right. Speaking of bad habits, let's talk about number eight. 27 % of trade-ins for new cars have negative equity. Okay. What's that mean? Let's think about conceptualize what that means. That means that when I go to trade in my car, I actually owe more on the car than it is worth, and I am rolling that into my next purchase.

5:50Yeah, well, I mean, look at this. Close to 8 % of people owed more than$15 ,000. If we tried to figure out what the actual average was of negative equity in the second quarter of 2025, according to admins, it was right under$7 ,000.

6:06Brian Preston:That means that when you go to purchase a new car, you are paying because of negative equity. you're taking out a loan that is$7 ,000 higher than the cost of the automobile. So what's causing this? Why is this happening? Well, one, and we see this all the time, it's low down payments. We know that cars are depreciable assets. As soon as you drive them off the lot, they go down in value. So if you have no skin in the game and you're doing 0 % down, day one, minute one, mile one, you are going to be underwater on that automobile if you don't put down a down payment. So quick depreciation. We know that's bad.

6:39How about the fact that longer loan terms? If you think about the fact that the typical loan is now 68 months, that is almost double what we talk about when we say 23.8.

6:51Brian Preston:And then what about high interest rates? We know that right now for a used car, the average new interest rate for a used car is 11.9%, almost 12%. Even for new cars, which are highly subsidized, the interest rate is a little over 6.5%. So all of these contributing factors are causing people to get underwater on the automobiles and continue to exacerbate this bad decision moving forward. So what's the solution? What's the takeaway? Here's how we protect ourselves. Nothing wrong with you buying used, reliable cars. I mean, that's where I started my journey. I remember the first two cars out of college that I bought were used cars, new to me, but still used reliable cars.

7:34Brian Preston:So I'm hearing you say this, Brian, used reliable car. That means I can go out and buy a two-year-old Mercedes right now, right? I'm going to get last year's Tesla Model X because that's what you're saying. I'm saying that, look, reliable transportation to get to your first builder of quality assets, which is your job. You have to be able to live less than you make and getting used reliable transportation that's not breaking the bank is going to be a key part of that. And a way that you can make sure that the car falls into the reliable realm is if you can follow 23.8 with your purchase, you're going to decrease the likelihood of being underwater.

8:14Brian Preston:And if you've never heard of this before, 23.8 is simply a rule that says when you go buy a car, whether it's new or used, we want you to put 20 % down. We don't want you to finance it for any more than three years or 36 months. And that car payment cannot exceed all of your car payments cannot exceed 8 % of your monthly gross income. So that's 23, but there are two caveats we always throw out there with them. Yeah. We don't want you buying luxury cars with this. If you're trying to buy a BMW, Mercedes, any of those premium brands, same as cash. I want you to pay it off like it's cash in the first year that you own it.

8:45And then car payments should not exceed your monthly investments. If you've got a car payment, it's bigger than what you're put in your Roth IRA, what are we doing?

8:53Brian Preston:You got a problem. And another thing you can do when it comes to automobiles is you can make sure that you maintain them well so that the car will last you for a long term. If you go out there and buy some luxury car to where you can't afford to replace the brakes, you can't afford to do the oil change, you can't afford to replace the tires, and you're just going to drive it till the wheels fall off, there's no way that that car is going to last you when you buy an automobile. It ought to be a seven, 10-year purchase unless you're someone who is at the stage of life where you're trading in your cars and paying cash.

9:27Brian Preston:One of the best ways to make sure your car can have that sort of life is by actually maintaining and actually taking care of it. Yeah. And this is one of those things, guys, it is so much better to actually be rich than to look rich. So don't drive around in your wealth because all these decisions where people are financing and driving cars well beyond what their paycheck would recommend or suggest for them are failing to miss out on their Roth IRAs, all the things that their future self will regret because they were trying to fake it until they made it. All right. We talked about cars, which is a huge purchase.

9:59Brian Preston:Let's talk about the next biggest purchase that most people will make in their lifetime. And this one really was a mind blowing stat. Would you believe that right now the median first time home buyer is 38 years old, almost 40 years old before they're buying their first well let's actually pull up if you pull up the stats on this it's even scarier than this as you can see if we had just gone back a decade previous that that stat was 31 but that's not even the full pictures because look at repeat buyers that number has gone from 53 to 61 just since 2015 but but here's the thing that kind of blew my mind is if you look at all buyers when they group them all together we went from 44 all the way to 56.

10:39This means my first-time homebuyers are actually less represented, more repeat buyers, meaning this is less and less younger people getting in. And that part breaks my heart because a home affordability is something I think a lot of us aspire to. This is something that I hope in the coming years we have better news to report.

10:59Brian Preston:And so one of the questions, okay, why is this happening? It's because home affordability is at an all-time low. We know that if you look just a few years ago, in March of 2019, if you had a household income of$75 ,000, roughly half of the housing marketplace was affordable to you. You fast forward to now, March of 2025, only 20 % of available houses are affordable. It's cut in half how much you can go out there and buy what houses are available. Even if you go up to household income of$100 ,000, where the number of houses that fell into that affordable range was 65 % of the inventory. Now it's only 37 % of the inventory.

11:39Brian Preston:Houses are just not affordable in the same way that there were even five or six years ago. Yeah. And for my podcast listeners, I mean, think about even if you went up to 125 ,000, that's the income level you'd have to be to afford 52 % of the marketplace. And that's pretty daggum successful. Whereas just a few years earlier, six years ago, you could have afforded close to 75 % of the market. That's kind of wild. Like I said, I'm optimistic and hopeful that this will improve. But in the meantime, let's give you some takeaways so you can know how to navigate this. Yeah. And I want to be clear, this isn't just about housing affordability.

12:12Brian Preston:There are other factors. Yes, student loans are different now than they were a number of years ago. And there is now a sentiment that home ownership might not be for everyone. But if you are someone that wants to own a home. We believe that there are some right ways to do it. And the first thing that we would encourage you is don't be in a rush to get into your first home. Far too often, we see people say, I got to buy, I got to buy, I got to buy. It's the next step, next step, next step. It's only the next step if it's the next step that makes sense for you. Don't feel like you have to make this giant, huge purchase just because other people are suggesting that you should.

12:47Brian Preston:You need to make sure that it makes sense for your life circumstance and it's part of your financial goals. The second point is you don't need a home to build wealth. The way I would phrase this is don't force it. That's right. There's nothing wrong with you if you realize a home affordability in your area is just not great right now, especially when you compare rent versus own and rent is like handily beating out the down payment with the interest rates and everything else. Don't force it. I would encourage you start building your army of dollar bills outside of the home so that you have better options and opportunities in the future?

13:22Brian Preston:So if you are in the market to buy a home and you do want to do it the right way, we want you to follow our 3-5-25 rule. And what that suggests is that when it comes to your down payment, you don't have to put down 20%. You can put down a down payment as low as 3%. We don't require 20 % for first-time home purchasers. We also want to make sure that you plan on being in that home for at least five years. If you don't know that you can be in that home in that location for five years, home ownership might not be for you. And we want you to make sure that the total cost of your housing is less than 25 % of your gross income.

13:56Brian Preston:So if you can follow three, five, 25, even in a market where home affordability is difficult, you're likely going to set yourself up to be in a sound financial situation. This leads to number six. income only explains 30 percent of net worth no no bro that's got to be wrong that's got to be wrong i think there's a lot of people look without a doubt making a bigger income can turn into a better opportunity for building can but unfortunately because of i don't know if it's lifestyle creep or it's just lack of discipline there's a lot of people out there that are spending every dollar that comes into their household.

14:33So that's why you cannot directly say income is resulting in higher net worth for the majority of people.

14:40Brian Preston:Yeah, we always say all the time on the show, it doesn't matter how much you make, it matters how much you keep. Do you have the ability to turn your income into wealth? I think it was a JL Collins who said, everybody thinks they want to make a million bucks. But the answer is, the truth is, you don't really want to make a million bucks. You want to spend a million bucks. Morgan Housel. Or Morgan Housel is the one who said that. You want to spend a million bucks. Well, those two are in vast contrast. Just because you have a high income, just because you have an ability to spend a lot of money, does not mean that you're going to have the discipline necessary to be able to use that money to create margin, to ultimately create wealth.

15:17Brian Preston:And a lot of folks don't believe that, but we've seen the counter with our folks. Yeah, so let's give you the takeaways. Guys, I want to make sure that you know anyone can build wealth. It's really leaning into that first ingredient on the three ingredients of wealth building, discipline. Can you live on less than you make and actually put that money to work? And so, you know, every year we do a survey of our millionaire clients. We ask them all these questions around what they look like and the decisions they make and the behaviors that they implement. And what's wild is when you look at our clients, would you believe, and this excludes our retired clients, And so our clients that are still working age, 12 % of our client base here at Abound Wealth Management has household incomes less than$100 ,000, and yet they've been able to build up sizable portfolios.

16:03Brian Preston:It's not about the income. It's about what you do with the income. And that leads to the next thing. Just do something. That's right. Smart. Even if you start small, I'm okay with it. I think there's this false narrative that people put in their head is that I'll just do it later when I make more money. Guys, you'll never be able to get back that time. So I'd rather you start now with$50 a month, 5 % of your income. You choose what that starting point is, but we got to do something. It's getting easier for you to start somewhere because a lot of people will say that, hey, the number one place that I started saving, the number one place I started building wealth was inside of my employer-sponsored retirement plan.

16:42Brian Preston:That actually leads to our number five mind-blowing stat. 61 % of 401k plans now have automatic enrollment where if you don't want to participate, if you don't want to be part, you actually have to opt out as opposed to opt in. And the results of this small little change have been mind blowing. Yeah, this warms my heart a little bit. Because of the way some legislation changed and encouraged employers, we put the headline on here because we're both Georgia boys from Athens, Georgia. Automatic for the people. Look at what has happened since 2006. automatic for the people has caused people. Now we got 61 % auto enrollment.

17:23More people are going into retirement plans and their future sales will thank them for it because this is what helps you build your great big beautiful tomorrow.

17:32Brian Preston:Think about this. Plans that had automatic enrollment had a 94 % participation rate compared to 64 % without that. That means that because of this automatic enrollment, people are, I say being forced, that's not true, but it's a lot. People, frankly, are not willing to take hold of their financial life. And because the automatic enrollment is doing that for them, it's getting them participating. And of those 69 % of folks who do automatic enrollment have it built in where every year it gets 1 % better. So this year I got automatically enrolled at 3 % and next year it's going to be 4%. And the year after that's going me 5%.

18:07Brian Preston:And what's awesome about that is that if you start early enough, it does not take a lot to have a huge impact. We actually have a great deliverable. You can go to moneyguy.com slash resources and download what 1 % more can do for you. And I want you to think about this in the context of these 69 % of participants in automatic enrollment plan that are getting 1 % better every single year. It is making a huge drastic impact to what their retirement will look like. They are They're literally replacing years of their retirement living need just by being in automatic enrollment and improving their savings rate every year.

18:43For my podcast listeners, because they're not seeing this on the screen, this is why I want you to go get this deliverable so you can see specifically for your age group, a 20-year-old who actually increases this up by 1 % can almost impact your retirement by 10%. Huge. Think about it. 1 % equals 10 % in retirement. For a 30-year-old, that 1 % change can change your retirement by close to 5%. Awesome. Guys, these are small decisions that are going to have big results for you. So that's the takeaway, is make the good habits as easy as possible, and you can automate this because that makes it that much easier and more likely to create success for the long time.

19:21Brian Preston:I want to be clear. The way that automatic enrollment works for a 401k plan is the plan sponsors, hey, you didn't tell me what you want to do, so I'm going to automatically make you do it. We don't want you to be in that camp. We want you to volitionally decide, I want to do this. I want to contribute. But if you can set it up to happen automatic, you are going to make that good habit as easy as possible. And you'll be amazed what happens after six, eight, 12, two years, three years, five years. We'll look back and say, holy cow, that little automated process that I put into place had a huge impact.

19:56Brian Preston:And even if you can't save 25 % or you can't save the desired savings that you want to do, something is better than nothing. Maybe you can only start with$20 a month. Maybe you can only start with$100 a month. Maybe just do this. Take your take-home pay, whatever your paycheck is, whether it's a monthly paycheck or a weekly or a bi-weekly, and just say, okay, whatever that net amount is, I'm just going to save 5%. I'm going to take 5 % of that amount, and I am going to choose not to spend it, but rather to put it aside for my future self. And you will be amazed at how that can change your financial life.

20:35Yeah, and I love the fact because we're talking about we're giving all the benefits of automating, but that's really only half the battle. Guys, take an active role in what you're investing in as well. And then please, if you don't hear anything else on the show, because this leads to the next point that we'll bring up, make sure the money is actually getting invested nothing breaks my heart more when i find out people are really good at the savings side of things because that's the the discipline but you've got to finish the drill and actually put your money into your army of dollar bills so they can work just as hard for you so make sure you invest that money because the next stat that's going to break your heart is when you find out 28 now we were just talking about 401ks but 28 percent of IRA rollovers remained in cash after seven years.

21:23Brian Preston:What? What are we doing? So Andy Reid, he's the head of investor research behavior at Vanguard. He literally called this, he said, IRA cash, cashing in IRAs is a billion dollar blind spot. Folks putting their money into IRAs via rollovers or contributions and not doing anything with it. And so you may be asked the question okay well how's this happen what's going on here 68 percent of folks said they didn't realize it was in cash oh i thought it was being invested but it just sat there in cash 48 percent said hey i thought well as soon as i rolled it over vanguard was just going to take care of it they're going to automatically invest i thought this was going to happen for me and then 15 percent of folks said you know what i knew i was supposed to do it i knew i was supposed to invest i knew i was supposed to get it working for me i just never got around to it i just never did it half Half the battle is saving the money.

22:15Brian Preston:Half the battle is putting the money into an account, not spending it today. But you have to make sure you finish the drill. You have to make sure you actually invest those dollars so that they can begin working. So let's fix this today. If you go look at the key takeaways from this is know what your dollars are invested in. First, listen to the show, hit pause right now, and then go pull up your accounts and say, oh, make sure this money is truly invested so you're not part of this horrible statistic. And remember, automated does not mean autopilot. Automated means, hey, every month I'm going to have my money come out and it's going to go to work and I have automatic purchases and I'm going to have that taken.