My wife and I are in a pretty privileged position. We're young, healthy and with no dependents. We're still neck deep in student debt - we were paying it down rapidly until this started - but our mortgage only comes out to something like 15-20% of our take-home and our total expenses (sans student loan payments) are only maybe 40% of our income.
It looks like I'm going to keep my job, though I'll almost certainly have fewer hours going forward. She has been temporarily laid off but with a recall date for when the schools open again. Even if we were both on unemployment and with no other relief, we'd weather this fine and still be able to sock some away every month. Vermont in general has a shortage of young workers and neither of us should have trouble finding work to keep us afloat even through a nasty recession.
However, we do see a ton of people around us who are living paycheck to paycheck. Many don't know how to cook, have large debts (leased cars, loans, credit card debt), and are already not able to pay their rent/mortgages. I have no idea how they're going to get through the next 3 months, nevermind a rough couple of years.
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