Why do you think people use a credit card to buy nice things they don’t need, per se?
Something like 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It’s not that people “feel they deserve stuff before they can afford it”, it’s that in our current economic system, prices are going up and wages are staying low. Productivity is going up, but compensation is not keeping up with prices or productivity. People can at least dream of being able to pay off a credit card that they used to buy a new TV or maybe a new car, but something bigger like a house, or comfortably affording children, is off the table because of how expensive everything is right now.
But let’s be totally honest, people get into debt to do things like pay rent, or on car repairs, or hospital bills, or vet bills, etc. etc.
Also, people are allowed to have nice things they don’t need. They should have nice things they don’t need. This idea that, unless you’re well-off, you should only buy the bare necessities is bullshit. Comfort is necessary for basic mental health. You’re not an idiot who can’t take care of their money because you dare to buy a PS5 and a big TV. You just want to squeeze a tiny bit of pleasure out of this miserable existence.
I didn’t say that though, did I? I said that unless you can afford it, you shouldn’t be using a CC because you feel entitled to something. The capitalist system encourages that and now we have huge amounts of CC debt which is unmanageable.
Why do you think people use a credit card to buy nice things they don’t need, per se?
Something like 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It’s not that people “feel they deserve stuff before they can afford it”, it’s that in our current economic system, prices are going up and wages are staying low. Productivity is going up, but compensation is not keeping up with prices or productivity. People can at least dream of being able to pay off a credit card that they used to buy a new TV or maybe a new car, but something bigger like a house, or comfortably affording children, is off the table because of how expensive everything is right now.
But let’s be totally honest, people get into debt to do things like pay rent, or on car repairs, or hospital bills, or vet bills, etc. etc.
Also, people are allowed to have nice things they don’t need. They should have nice things they don’t need. This idea that, unless you’re well-off, you should only buy the bare necessities is bullshit. Comfort is necessary for basic mental health. You’re not an idiot who can’t take care of their money because you dare to buy a PS5 and a big TV. You just want to squeeze a tiny bit of pleasure out of this miserable existence.
also a big TV and PS5 cost less than one month’s rent at even a 50 year old small apartment
I didn’t say that though, did I? I said that unless you can afford it, you shouldn’t be using a CC because you feel entitled to something. The capitalist system encourages that and now we have huge amounts of CC debt which is unmanageable.
Because this is well known that people do it in the US. Putting a car on a credit card is madness, as the interest will eat you alive month by month.