A Wells Fargo customer saw a Tesla driver withdraw money from an ATM, and when she pulled up right behind that driver for her turn in line, she got to play detective thanks to that driver leaving a receipt behind.
The video showing how the other half lives, as she presented it, comes from creator In the Thick of It (@strictlychaotic). She posted it to TikTok on Thursday and has drawn more than a million views to it as of Sunday morning.
Setting the scene by explaining the Tesla driver left their receipt in the machine, she said, “I feel like broke people don’t do this, because I would never do this, like with my little [expletive] like five dollar available balance.”
She then revealed what she saw: “This person’s available balance is $16,840 … and 26 cents.” She then reported that the driver took out $100 before cavalierly driving away sans receipt.
Her caption accompanying the video was simply a money bag emoji.
Is a $16,840.26 balance unusual?
The Motley Fool led readers to a lesson in mean vs. median that illustrates just how much wealthier the wealthiest Americans are.
In 2022, the average or mean household checking account balance was $16,891, while the median household checking account balance was $2,800, which would put the Tesla driver in the average category.
That’s actually up from 2019, when the mean was $12,308.44 and the average was $2,318.41. In 2010, the mean was less than half of what it was in 2022, at $7,748.81, while the median was $1,543.35, just over half the 2022 total.
However, the mean might be a better gauge for where you are, via this one financial metric, than the average.
As the article explains, “The mean doesn’t work as well when there are extremely high outliers involved. Let’s say a group of five people have checking account balances of $0, $500, $2,000, $5,000, and $50,000. The mean balance is $11,500, but it’s almost entirely because of that one person with $50,000.”
The article also makes the case that it pays to go to college, as “Americans with a college degree have over three times as much in their checking accounts as other groups.” (Though they might be paying student loans off with part of that checking account balance.)
Viewers weigh in
People weighed in with a range of responses.
“If you don’t have at least that much saved at your age just walk into traffic now and save yourself the struggle,” one opined.
Another said, “I don’t even get a receipt. I don’t need a reminder of being broke.”
One contributed, “2 weeks ago at a gas station the person infront of me left their receipt.. he had $28,670 in his account I was like way to show off lol.”
That led to a response video in which the creator talked about meting out $10 worth of gas after the pump readout shows the person before her put in over $100 worth of gas into a presumably large car.
Some confessed that when they happen upon receipts, they seek narrative.
“I don’t go to the casino often but my fave thing to do is go to the ATMs and pull out the receipts everyone leaves behind to see if they should be gambling or not,” someone said.
“My older cousin gave me a Michael Kors purse that she didn’t use and it had an atm receipt in it and her available balance was $126,703,” another shared.
Finally, one said, “When we sold our house we had $300k in our account before we bought our new one….we took pictures, screenshot, and framed the banking slip.”
@strictlychaotic 💰
♬ original sound – In The Thick of It
The Daily Dot has reached out to the creator via TikTok direct message.
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