No money for fun

“Nearly 60% of Americans say they’re too broke to have fun.”

Nearly 60 percent of Americans now say they are too broke to have fun. Not broke in some abstract policy sense, and not broke as a temporary inconvenience that a few good months might resolve. Broke in the ordinary, accumulating way that happens when prices keep rising and paychecks do not follow: the budget that used to have a small margin for a dinner out or a weekend away no longer does, and that margin has not come back. For tens of millions of people, it has simply closed.

What makes the current moment distinct is not just the financial pressure itself but the duration of it. Costs spiked. Wages did not keep pace. The correction that previous generations were told would eventually arrive has not materialized. What researchers and pollsters are now documenting, across multiple independent surveys published in 2025 and 2026, is that for a substantial share of the American population, the budget line item for fun was the first to go and the last to come back.

The data behind that 57 percent figure is worth sitting with, not as an abstraction, but as a description of how people are actually spending their days. When cost and budget pressures are the single most commonly cited barrier to enjoyment in a national survey, that is not a complaint about luxury goods. That is a signal about the basic texture of daily life.

More info at:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/nearly-60-of-americans-say-they-re-too-broke-to-have-fun/ar-AA24wViL?ocid=BingNewsVerp