{"id":3881,"date":"2023-04-05T09:22:39","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T09:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/?p=3881"},"modified":"2023-04-05T09:22:39","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T09:22:39","slug":"global-nearly-half-of-us-consumers-use-digital-for-travel-healthcare-and-smart-home-tech-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/global-nearly-half-of-us-consumers-use-digital-for-travel-healthcare-and-smart-home-tech-activities\/","title":{"rendered":"Global: Nearly Half of US Consumers Use Digital for Travel, Healthcare and Smart Home Tech Activities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Supplemental Incomes Make Household Finances More Manageable for Millions<\/h3>\n
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Americans have a way of overcoming financial adversity, and this is borne out by the rising number of employed consumers taking on side hustles to make ends meet, and then some.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also supported by the latest entry in the long-running survey series \u201cNew Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report \u2014 Supplemental Income Edition<\/a>,\u201d a PYMNTS and\u00a0LendingClub<\/a>\u00a0collaboration. The series gauges the financial health of working U.S. consumers, over 60% of whom live paycheck to paycheck along a continuum of struggling to not struggling to meet expenses.<\/p>\n

Reviewing the new data in a conversation with PYMNTS, LendingClub Financial Health Officer\u00a0Anuj Nayar<\/a>\u00a0was taken by the sheer scale of the money being generated by employed people adding side gigs, and the ripple effects created, suggesting a new normal is emerging.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that jumped out to me is they\u2019re generating over $50 billion a month from these cash-based side gigs, which is a huge amount,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Looking just at those with full-time jobs, the new report found that 29% have started picking up extra income in a variety of ways in a trend that first kicked in strongly in early 2022 as COVID malingered and inflation began running amok.<\/p>\n

This intersected with another pandemic trend \u2014 remote work \u2014 which took people out of offices and into home-based settings where many felt comfortable earning money \u201cafter work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data shows that this is going to continue,\u201d Nayar said. \u201cEven those who are not currently deriving an additional income, when asked if they plan to in the next three months, 51% said they did. You can see that some of those people are starting to shift, and it makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

As layoffs rip through parts of the economy and the next three quarters remain a recessionary question mark, more people are taking control by supplementing stretched paychecks.<\/p>\n

One Person\u2019s Work Is Another\u2019s Play<\/strong><\/h4>\n

A surprise in the latest survey is the high number of people without issues meeting expenses from their main paycheck doing supplemental work anyway. Nayar linked that to a few factors, from taking control of personal finances to simply earning money doing things they enjoy.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver half, 56%, said their motivation was enjoying doing these side jobs,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re starting to see people take their hobbies and turn them into a side hustle. You may be making something and just putting it up on\u00a0Etsy<\/a>. We saw a lot of people selling products from their closets and wardrobes. So,\u00a0eBay<\/a>, or if you\u2019re on the more affluent side,\u00a0The RealReal<\/a>. If you can make $700 selling that Gucci handbag that\u2019s been sitting in your closet for a year, why not do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have some friends who are doing things like\u00a0TaskRabbit<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u201cThey love to fix things. Personally, the idea of taking a piece of\u00a0IKEA<\/a>\u00a0furniture and putting it together is my hell on a Saturday morning. But some people get an intense amount of pleasure from that. If they can connect with me and I\u2019ll pay them 60 bucks to come over to my house and do something that they\u2019re going to enjoy, why not do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

While this report is perhaps the most hopeful of the entire series in its outlook, the fact remains that 2022 sapped savings and credit card open-to-buy for millions who need that extra income \u2014 if they can find it. Others are turning to personal loans to lower their monthly expenses.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the last month or so showed us anything, it\u2019s that rising interest rates have affected both personal finances and the entire industry\u2019s finances,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a variable rate credit card and your interest rate has gone up 600 basis points or 500 basis points in the last year, you\u2019d be nuts not to think, \u2018Is there a better way to be doing this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, rolling up the balances of variable-rate credit cards into fixed-rate installment loans to manage finances with a paid-in-full date just three years out is appealing to more U.S. workers.<\/p>\n

Silver Linings in a Bleak Year?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

While the Supplemental Income Edition noted that 38% of struggling workers said their financial situation would decline seriously without extra income, as it would for 22% of those not struggling, the latest study proved that there are ways to overcome the paycheck panic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more silver lining now than there was a year ago,\u201d Nayar said. \u201cA year ago, we were in the depths of, \u2018What is going to happen?\u2019 The best thing we\u2019re seeing is consumers are really starting to take control of their finances. They\u2019re fully understanding that they\u2019re in control of how they manage their financial lives,\u201d from both an expense and income perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very positive about this,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s great to see more consumers realizing that they\u2019re in the driver\u2019s seat for their financial lives and starting to drive more income streams and reduce expenses and build up the savings cushion, which will affect them whatever happens.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supplemental Incomes Make Household Finances More Manageable for Millions Americans have a way of overcoming financial adversity, and this is borne out by the rising number of employed consumers taking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[73,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Nearly-Half-of-US-Consumers-Use-Digital-for-Travel-Healthcare-and-Smart-Home-Tech-Activities.jpg?fit=457%2C274&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3892,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881\/revisions\/3892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}