Some Food for Thought While Hunting Down a Bargain or Two

Nowadays, it’s good to develop an eye for a bargain. Being eagle-eyed as you glide along the supermarket aisle homing in on a bargain or two can certainly help the household income stretch so much further. Perhaps the money saved can even be channelled into a savings account with a decent return. Always worth thinking about. Yes, looking after every hard-earned penny surely makes sense in today’s harsh economic climate where uncertainty is the only certainty. After all, no one knows what’s around the corner.

But at least you’ve got some options when it comes to dealing with household finance and paying the bills on time. Spare a thought for others who don’t, struggling to survive on a paltry daily wage of two or three dollars a day. So no bank loans or credit cards for the people of Upper Egypt, for example. In fact, no access to banks either, or to the everyday services we tend to take for granted here in the West. With all the turmoil taking place in Egypt at the moment, the plight of the country’s poor and dispossessed has all but been forgotten.

About three-quarters of Egypt’s more than 10 million poor live in rural areas such as Upper Egypt. Problems there include high rates of infant mortality, underweight children, rampant illiteracy and poor sanitation and access to clean, safe water to drink. So you think you’ve got problems? Puts it all into some kind of perspective. The daily problems faced are compounded yet further if you happen to be female. The majority of young girls are taken out of school before they reach the age of 10 to work in the fields or to do other menial tasks. It’s life on the very edge of existence for the majority of families. Worth remembering the next time you walk down the supermarket aisle.

By contrast, the everyday experience for most people in Egypt’s major cities, such as Cairo or Alexandria, is so much better. For starters, the availability of work is greater and there is a rising, aspirational middle class. There is also a growing segment of young people who are better educated than ever before. With the population of the country as a whole growing annually, such sectors are also increasing proportionately, which is good news for the banking sector. Yet despite such growth, banking take-up remains stubbornly low with only around 10% of the population having a bank account.

But that’s Egypt for you. There’s no similar problem here in the United States, right? Think again. The last Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) survey found more than a quarter of all American households either didn’t have a bank account or were under banked, conducting some or all of their financial transactions outside of the mainstream banking system. That’s an incredible statistic.

Breaking down the headline figure, the survey found 8.2 percent of US households were unbanked, representing 1 in 12 households, or nearly 10 million in total. That means approximately 17 million adults lived in unbanked households. According to the survey again, just over 20 percent of US households were under banked, representing some 51 million adults living in 24 million households. The survey also found almost a third of households didn’t have any savings account

So plenty of food for thought the next time you go hunting down a bargain at your local supermarket, don’t you think? Check out the FDIC survey findings by clicking here.