Even Top Earners Are Falling Behind on Credit Card and Car Payments…
…Delinquencies on such debts from those making at least $150,000 annually have jumped almost 20% over the last two years
https://archive.is/dZ9eZ#selection-1139.0-1139.67
Answer - live within your means. We’ve not had any debt in the last 30+ years
TMF has long advised the value of living below your means. Many of us get there. It can be a problem for young people with many wants, student debt, and often on the low end of the pay scales.
This will be hard to believe, but I was a young person once. I had many wants and was at the lowest possible end of pay scales at the time. I did not have student debt, but I did have credit card debt, which I used to pay bills - which sometimes included “food.”
There was a point where I had an accident with my car, and the $800 insurance check was the only money I had as I moved to a new city, put down a security deposit on an apartment, and went to Sears Roebuck to buy two suits so I could go to work.
Buck it up, kids. I’d tell you to walk a mile in my shoes, but then I wouldn’t have any shoes.
It is not just a “value”. It is a fundamental aspect of reality.
Our culture has evolved to obscure that basic fact, creating a consumerist culture that uses desire to enslave. Significant evidence and convincing arguments that ancient Sumer began the game of civilization along the same lines.
Tuff stuff. We’ve all been there at one time or another. Grow up. From first job forward place 10% in the savings pot and use the other 90% to pay your bills. Oh, yea, the most important part …. get a job.
We are going into a great depression.
Many baby boomers are going to be ruined.
These comments about kids won’t play well this time next year.
Agree with that. I came from a very poor family, we didn’t even have a flushing toilet, just a ‘closet’ down the back yard. I worked, studied and get to one of the best universities in the world, before entering the professions (FCA).
We do have a bit of a whingy young generation who want it all handed to them. This then spills over into the ‘I deserve a big house, fancy holidays and a Mercedes’ as these people enter adulthood.
Can’t afford something doesn’t seem to matter these days. I’m always amused by a sign that used to be in my local bank “Don’t wait, have it now”. The bank (Nat West) went insolvent in 2008 and had to be nationalised during the financial crash of that year.