In debt doesn’t mean you’re broke. Not having money to spend is being broke. I’m pretty sure most Americans will admit they’re in debt.
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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It's just temporary trust me.
Tonight is the night, I'm going to sleep and have 🗽the American Dream ™️ 🦅
Hey, it's the land of Hollywood. If anyone in the world is good in pretending, it's them.
That's called Modern Monetary Theory. It's a fun game until the underlying physics of our little civilizational project fails, that is to say the energy return on pumping oil out of the ground.
America is a third world occupied country but everybody is in denial, obese and wearing nice clothes 😌
If you own a house or vehicle in the USA there's a good chance you're in debt.
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In debt doesn’t mean broke. People with a mortgage that they are easily paying off have debt. Millionaires and billionaires have millions and billions in debt. Debt itself isn’t bad. Debt can be good.
The average American is living paycheck to paycheck with bad, high interest debt and killer monthly minimums. Many people roll their underwater car loan into a new underwater car loan. The housing market is taking a turn.
People are mostly broke.
The point is that being in debt isn’t the same as being broke and living paycheque to paycheque. Rich people have more debt than broke people because banks etc are far more willing to give rich people debt since they can actually pay it back.
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Toxic capitalism, instagram
In a country where personal identity is 90% shaped by politics and consumerism makes seeming poor like herpes.
Normies just reacting to their environment
The thing about it... Anyone can pretend to be rich for a year or two but math will math eventually.
While I have no debts, sometimes my bank account is hovering at a $200. I hate the insecurity it gives me.
I mean honestly some should not be. There is this guy that talks about california real estate on over ten million dollar properties were the person has problems with other debt to. I mean the down payment has to be a mill or more. If I had financial means like that I would be debt free.
There is deff high income people who suck at budgetting. But fast majority of pay to pay check crowd are objectively poor.
60% of americans live pay check to pay check. I would say like 10% of them people who can't manage money.
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Do we count mortgages as debt here?
They often are, yes. I'm not sure exactly what "in debt" means to OP. But, when I use it like this I generally mean "negative net worth" not "carrying a line of credit".
I currently have a balance on a CC, but I don't consider myself in debt, because it's smaller than my checking account balance, and that's smaller than my investment account balance, and that's smaller than my retirement account balance.
I don't own a home, but I also didn't really consider myself "in debt" when I purchased my current car.
Oddly enough I would say I am "in debt to" my CC company, because I do owe money to them and they do not owe money to me. The "to X" part of the phrase restricts my consideration to just two-party financial relationship, in my mind. When you leave off the "to X", I consider all the financial relationship I have and (roughly) sum over them.
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I believe it's partially because the national debt has always been high and keeps getting higher. It's been a little while since I checked or heard anything about it, but it got a lot of press time in the 2010's. I feel like that affected how americans view debt. I've also heard the financial advice espoused by banks "it's financially healthy to have some debt, it helps you build credit". Which is partially a crock of shit and regardless of the veracity of that statement, it mostly leads to people digging a hole they can't get out of.