most people live on credit cards as bridge finance between paychecks. when I mean most people - I mean 50% of the population.
Credit card statistics are heavily manipulated because it's easy to make them sound terrible. I don't know which factoid specifically you're referring to, but the studies about "X percent of Americans couldn't handle an emergency expense without putting it on a credit card" often use tricks like including anyone who would pay by credit card if they could. I remember reading some of these studies and realizing that I would have been included in the statistic because I prefer to use a credit card where I can, even though I pay it off before interest accrues.
Median wealth in the U.S just around $100k - see Wikipedia & other databases.
how many people own houses ? & for those people that own houses - average equity in those houses is less than 45%.
ain't no factoid - but lived reality of most people. maybe on the coasts where techies and finance bros live - but the rest of america is facing a bleak financial reality.
That's not really applicable because:
1. the study is for an "unexpected" expense. This you can see from 2 years away
2. The wording in the study was something along the lines of "would have to dip into savings", not that they literally don't have any money for it. The fed's survey of consumer finances shows the median household has between 7-13k (depending whether you're counting median income or median wealth) in their checking accounts
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart...
Should people be more financially responsible? Yes
Are they today? No
In a rational world payday loans, predatory auto loans, BNPL, perpetually rolling credit card debt etc would not need to exist. Yet these sectors are rapidly growing and companies in it are thriving.
I'm saying the specific claim of "most people live on credit cards as bridge finance between paychecks. when I mean most people - I mean 50% of the population" is false.
- written on my S10
I don't have to deal with insurance, parking (if parking is free by you, it shouldn't be), maintenance (I work on them myself, I just pay for cheap parts), and fuel is effectively free. That's all on top of the car payment for people who haven't paid off their car.