More than half of African Americans polled, 53%, said their finances were shaky; 34% of whites and 42% of other ethnic groups polled expressed similar concerns.
The Times/Bloomberg poll, based on telephone interviews May 1 through May 8 with 2,208 adults nationwide, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Part of many Americans' worries is their increasing debt.
Two out of five Americans who have credit card debt said it was more than it was five years ago -- with 22% saying they owed "much more" on their cards.
Ten percent of credit card holders said they owed more than $7,000 on their cards, and 11% said they owed more than $10,000.
Many of those surveyed do not anticipate their debt load growing lighter in the year ahead. Altogether, 15% of respondents said they expected to have more debt in the coming year, and nearly 1 in 10 Americans said they also expected to have lower assets.
Chris Kobes, 41, who lives in Cloquet, Minn., near Duluth, was among those who told pollsters that he had worries about the economy and his own finances.
With earnings of less than $40,000 a year, Kobes said he just barely makes it from paycheck to paycheck -- and that's after cutting back on things such as eating out, going to movies and driving unnecessary distances.
"I do very little extra that isn't a necessity," Kobes said. "With the cost of gas and food being more, there's just less money left over."
Affluent Americans also have a gloomier perspective. In a Bloomberg poll taken a year ago, nearly two-thirds of investors making more than $100,000 a year said they expected to have lower debt and higher assets in the year ahead. This time around, just 49% of that group held such a rosy outlook.
In general, Americans are planning to increase savings or curtail spending. Thirty-two percent predicted that they would have less debt and more assets in the coming year; 11% anticipated lower debt -- but also lower assets.
Still, for better or worse, fewer Americans are planning to tighten their belts than during the economic downturn of the early 1990s. In a 1991 Times poll, nearly half said they would use their credit cards less. In the most recent poll, 43% of Americans anticipated less debt in the coming year.
As might be expected given the current housing slump, Americans are skeptical that the housing crisis will be over soon.
