Debt in America

For most of last week, the talking heads had been gawking over the rising amount of debt American’s are carrying. The number thrown about was $8565 per household, apparently up almost 15 percent since 2000. And that’s just credit card debt.

I’m not really surprised. I’ve carried a lot more credit card debt than that with regularity.

Can you imagine if they roped in auto loan debt? I’d guesstimate that the average 2-car household owes more than $20k to someone just on their auto loans.

Student loans? Well, I think that those are more limited to people under 35. Tuition didn’t get stupid until the late 1980’s.

I don’t have student loans, but some of my friends do. My sister has ’em. Roll those into the equation, double it to make it a household number and, well, yeah, Americans are definitely carrying a lot of debt.

That’s pretty sad.

As a result, I’m all but certain that most people are only a paycheck or two away from living on the street — to a degree, myself included. And my non-mortgage debt is under $4k!?

How can this be?

The real story isn’t actually the debt people are carrying — it’s really a case of our expenses.

In my case, my monthly expenses routinely exceed $2500.

It doesn’t take a skilled mathematician to tell you that if my income were suddenly non-existent, I could only continue on for a few weeks, at best.

What the general population needs to come to grips with is that it doesn’t matter if you make a $100,000 a year when you then go out spend $101,000… You’re not not getting anywhere.

You’re actually going backwards. Again, simple math indicates that.

I’m semi-guilty of that sort of mindset. I got a raise and bought a BMW.

Wanna talk about stupid?

Yeah, that was stupid.