DEBT

Statistics and Stuff

Young Families in Debt: Spending habits of young married couples with children (both spouses 18 to 25): Average after-tax income, $19,783. Average annual spending, $21,401. (They are spending around 8% more than they make.)

Family Economics Review, quoted in U.S.A. Today, May 20, 1991, p. D1. 

Personal debt in the U.S. is increasing at the rate of $1000 per second and consumer installment debt has mushroomed to a point where it takes approximately $1 out of every $4 that consumers earn after taxes to keep up the payments--not including the home mortgage. For over 250,000 Americans, the burden of debt is so great that he/she declares bankruptcy. There are even more serious consequences of this financial tension created by debt: 56% of all divorces are a result of financial tension in the home. 

Howard Dayton in Homemade, June, 1986.

Humor

A man called the police and reported that all of his wife's credit cards had been stolen. Then he added, "But don't look too hard for the thief. He's charging less than my wife ever did."

Source Unknown.

The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments.

Source Unknown.

A man was once boasting to an acquaintance, "We have a whole room full of furniture from France that goes back to Louis the 14th." "That's nothing," replied the other. "We've got a whole house full of furniture from Sears that goes back to Harry on the first."

Source Unknown.