Most staggering thing I got from this is the average American having $16,000 in credit card debt is that a true figure? Thats crazy if it is is I can't stand charging anything on my cards I couldn't imagine not paying them in full every month. I would be sick to my stomach everyday if I had that kind of credit card debt.
Truthfully, I thought it would be higher.
I've worked with a lot of people that shocked me when I found out how much they owe on Credit cards, and those cards had ridiculous rates. One guy that worked for me was always struggling financially, he had a 15 year old truck that he had owned for a year, his interest rate was 34%. He told me it was the only way he could buy a vehicle, what perplexed me even more is he had $200K handed to him about 3 years before this, all money was gone with nothing to show for it and further in debt than he had been before he fell into the $$. It took me a while to understand how he accomplished that task.
I've never been monetarily wealthy. My first wife set me back pretty bad for the short time we were married and it took me a couple years to pay off what debt she left me.
After that, I've been comfortable and smartly afforded some toys with smart decisions with money. I got a loan for my boat, we thought about paying cash but it just didn't make sense to with the interest rate I got with it.
My wife asked my 9 year old the other day if he thought we were rich, he said "yeah, kinda", she replied with "we are far from being rich....". I gave them my thought on how it is relative, to people that make millions of dollars a year we are not rich at all but to other people that are struggling they see us as being very rich because we have a nice house, boat, decent vehicles, we get to do things that some people can't afford and don't do things that some people can afford and we can't (or won't).
It bothers me sometimes how my wife makes comments like we are struggling to our son:-/