no, most Americans live worse than that. They finance their entire life. The education, the house, the cars, the furniture, the food, the everything. If you want it all, and have the cashflow, you can have it all for a set of minimum monthly payments that leaves you with little actual cash in the bank and an increasingly large debt to pay.

It's the eternal blind optimism of Americans. What's the monthly payment? Oh, I can swing that! My salary is X and always will be, or higher! Never mind that these been a recession about every eight years during my lifetime!