One of my all-time favorite Dave Ramsey lines is this one.
Sad but true… Debt does seem to be the norm these days. When we were shopping for a vehicle earlier this year, we even had a family friend look at us like we had two heads when we told him we planned to pay cash for a vehicle. Our friends words? “You’ll always have a car payment.” WHAT?????
I guess that our friend’s way of thinking is more normal than we think. Check out some of these statistics I found.
- Credit card customers paid over $14.6 billion in 2008 in just penalties (late payments, over the limit fees, etc.).
- In 2008, the average new car loan was $25,000.
- Americans own approximately 1.4 billion credit cards. That’s about 9 cards per cardholder.
- The average cardholder is about $6200 in debt to credit card companies. That’s each person, not each household.
- One in every 35 U.S. households filed for bankruptcy in 2007. The reports I saw said that this number was on the rise.
While my husband and I are working our way out of debt (only 2 accounts left to knock out!), we have the goal of being debt-free. I guess that makes us…
WEIRD
But hey… I’d rather be weird than broke!
For more great frugal living ideas, stop by Frugal Friday hosted by Life As MOM.