Quote from: suchmoon on February 07, 2024, 12:36:04 AM

Quote from: Hispo on February 06, 2024, 11:53:47 PM

Question. I have read in The United States personal debt can be a serious matter, and a very crippling problem for many people who live in debt. How realistically it would be to say it has something to do with the personal mathematical pro-efficiency such person has to manage numbers in general?
I ask because to me, money management in a personal level is just matter of adding basic income and subtracting the expenses, the needs and wants, etc.
Would not be unfair to say people cannot do math and hence become involved in a very serious debt?
If that was true then you would be implying a very important percentage of the people of the United States cannot do math to a basic level. I would like to think that is just rather a stereotype foreigners have on them. Sad

It might be an exaggeration that "most" can't do basic math but for sure "many" can't. And when it comes to money and debt, there are some shitty business practices, like selling big items with a focus on monthly payments and not on the total cost. For example if you buy a car, all you'll ever hear (unless you specifically ask the right questions) at a dealership is your monthly loan or lease payment. "Just put your signature on this disclosure page, it's fine, don't worry about the $20k interest and $10k in dealership fees, the monthly payment is still what you wanted it to be, because we extended your loan to 8 years".

But all the sketchy-borderline-fraud salesmanship aside, at the root of it all is people not doing math, whether they're too stupid or too lazy.

Those situations you just described actually sound borderline illegal, to be honest. Are you implying people in the United States need to have a private lawyer in order to buy a car with the peace of mind of not being scammed? Sad

I mean, I was aware there were much people there trying to screw others for a living, but I never thought it was such an endemic thing, to the point one cannot easily buy a car without having to be aware of hidden fees or longer-than-expected loans.
Here it is different, we dont have credit, just recently we have managed to get some of our inflation under control, so banks have managed to increase credits again for the average citizen, not much only 200-300$ limits for cards. If one wants to buy a car or a house one needs to have all the cash on hand at the moment of signing the property transference. No added fees or anything like it.
It is interesting how the excess of credit or the lack of it can have an impact of the "economal culture" of a whole population and a whole country.
I wonder how the life style of the average American person would change if they did bot have access to credit, as it happened to us for many years...