Originally Posted by captainkudzu

I had a similar thought. If anything hurts our personal financial situations today, it is the availability of easy credit. Combine that with the instant gratification tendencies of today's Americans and you get massive credit card debt. Repayments on this debt take up a large part of many people's disposable income.

And much of this debt results from things that we want, but don't need. Dinners out, movies, computers, ipods, fashionable clothes. This is the stuff that we risk our retirement incomes and homes for.