‘This doesn’t look like the best economy ever’: 40% of Americans say they still struggle to pay bills

Sommer Johnson thought everything was finally coming together for her last year. She was engaged, working full time and doing well in online college classes when her fiance’s mother died a week before their wedding day — triggering a series of large and unexpected expenses that left her struggling to pay her bills and brought her to the verge of bankruptcy.

“I keep hearing this is one of the best economies we’ve ever had and unemployment is down, especially among African Americans, which I am,” said Johnson, 39, who lives in Douglasville, Ga., an Atlanta suburb. “I’m looking around going, ‘Where is this boom?’ From where I sit, this doesn’t look like the best economy ever.”

The economic expansion this week became the longest in U.S. history, surpassing the 1990s boom, which lasted exactly a decade.

View the complete July 4 article by Heather Long on The Washington Post website here.