I...what makes you think you can handle payments on a lease if you can't save what you'd be paying on those payments otherwise?
People are really bad at managing money. The proliferation of credit has done immense damage to peoples' abilities to conceptualize what they can afford.
No one wants to go to people and say "Hey, your life is going to go into the shitter eventually, are you ready for it?" and keep pointing out that happens to everyone eventually, sometimes more than once.
They don't live in isolation. They're bombarded with a consumerist culture that tells them to live outside the standard they can reasonably afford. It takes an iron will to ignore all outside influences and be content with the stable level of poverty you can afford.
I mean "shit" as in something goes wrong that makes things unpleasant. If you have the financial cushion, in the US, it isn't that bad [unless its medical, in which case you'll end up bankrupt much of the time although hopefully ACA will reduce that issue].
> They don't live in isolation. They're bombarded with a consumerist culture that tells them to live outside the standard they can reasonably afford. It takes an iron will to ignore all outside influences and be content with the stable level of poverty you can afford.
Tbh, I agree with you. I want to go back to renting a room so I can save more money and my friends/family all openly attack me on the idea because "No woman will want you, blah blah", etc. The hilarious part is the same ones mock me for "consuming too much" even tho the handful of things they mock me about collectively cost less than $50/month compared to saving $1k/month by renting a room. I'm single now and I don't need that much space.
Aka shortsighted. And I'm definitely not saying I haven't been there.
Whereas if you keep putting that $25-per-paycheck into a savings account (or a shoebox, or a hollowed-out book or whatever), there will probably come a time when being able to fix your car's transmission, or buying food to make sure your kids aren't starving, or having just one dinner at a place with cloth napkins, is going to seem more important than whatever you're saving for.
But this ties into the poverty trap where you simply stop thinking about the future because you're out of hope.
Yes, you can afford a payment today, but you can't afford the couch, if you can't otherwise save to buy it outright.
Except, you're exactly right- the stuff that the money gets spent on will frequently be wildly more important than the sofa. It should be saved, and then it should be spent on the more important stuff. And then you never get a sofa, but at least your transmission works and your kids aren't eating ramen six days a week.