48% of Canadians on brink of insolvency, online survey says

Yeah, most presidential election polls around here survey roughly that amount of people - and they consistently get it 'right', most likely because they also 'sample it right'

That would depend entirely on the sampling methodology.

Since “online surveys” are as a general rule very poorly constructed (frequently self-sampling) I believe it’s that, rather than the sample pool size, that the parent is responding to.

Additionally Ipsos Reed was hired to run this poll on behalf of MNP, whose press release this information is coming from.

MNP, among other things, offers debt consolidation services. There’s incentive here for Ipsos Reed to construct this sample pool to get a result that gets people worried about their debt load.

The problem isn't that it's a bad sample size per se. Given Canada's population (~37M), you get something between 2-3% margin of error at 95% confidence level with that sample size. The problem comes down to how you get your samples — online polling especially is skewed by how you pick your audience. For example, if you only poll your friends, your friend's friends and so forth until you hit the number, you will likely see a pretty uniform result, which is obviously far from giving any reasonable insight.

I mean, who in their right mind spends $80k on a truck?

I have the same sentiment, a lot of people buy a payment and auto loans are now 7 (or more) years long which is a lot of the reason you see that. Trucks, at least in the US, are considered work vehicles for tax purposes in some professions such as farming or construction.

I know what you mean. I regularly see fast food or other low income workers wearing $1000 worth of designer clothing while carrying a brand new iPhone or something, while taking the bus. I see people in my income bracket overspend all the time without really seeming to be bothered by it. Constant vacations, expensive tech, fancy cars things like this.

I know as far as vehicles go, a lot of people here seem to lease rather than buy. I know a few people on modest wages who lease brand new cars for a couple years rather than buy an older one or a used one. I also know quite a few people who pretty much live off their credit card.

Then, at least in Vancouver here, you get a lot of young people with family money so they'll just kinda bum around on the streets or float from job to job while their parents are paying their bills for them. It's not even just the wealthy people, a lot of middle class or even income families seem to be like this.

I remember one day in particular in a corner store, a lady came in behind me from where she'd been panhandling and tried to buy a pack of smokes. She didn't have enough change, so she tried a debit card, that didn't work. So she pulled out a cell phone and called her mom and started screaming at her in the middle of the store about how she hadn't put money in her bank account yet and that she needed to buy something. I left about that time, but it sounded like her mom was about to rush down to the bank for her.

> I mean, who in their right mind spends $80k on a truck? Yet we see them EVERYWHERE, at least in our neck of the woods

No small part of that will be because they’re written off as a business expense for mining contractors, assuming Nickel City means you’re near Thompson

Same reason Northern Alberta is crawling with F350s

Dutch attitudes to debt are different from the US, Canada, Australia and UK.

Dutch mortgages have historically been very high: mortgage interest was tax deductible, and at one stage Dutch banks would lend you 120%, capitalising the purchase costs and often extra to update the kitchen and bathroom.

On the other hand, Dutch personal unsecured debt was very low. Anecdotally, Dutch people don't like purchasing on credit. Partly that's a cultural aversion to debt for consumption. And partly a reflection of the Dutch banking system, which historically charged very high interchange fees for credit cards, hence credit cards had low acceptance by merchants (the biggest Dutch supermarket chain still doesn't accept credit cards, much to the surprise of tourists). Also, when I worked in the Dutch credit card industry (running operations and credit risk for one of the big banks), 80% of the credit cards were actually charge cards, contractually obliged to pay off 100% at the end of each month. Only 20% were able to carry a revolving credit from month to month.

I really like his blog and it’s in my RSS feed.

I wish his writing style was a bit more serious. I personally like it, but when I share articles with friends and family - nobody can take him seriously.