I find a lot of times it's not people's fault. Even if you have a buffer for safety if **** hits the fan and everything goes south no matter how much you prepare you will end up in a bad spot.
Bah, I don't buy that - the buffer is not big enough if that's the case.
4 weeks before we closed on our house I lost my job for medical reasons. Long story, but we still closed the house and we still made it work for the first year even though we were tight..but we made it.
What we did was
adjust - first, one of the cars came off the road immediately- needless to say that was a big saving. The cellphones went out the window, we cancelled our satellite TV, dropped the home phoneline to the absolute basic level of service we could get whilst still having a dialtone, went to dialup internet (gasp!), we didn't eat out for a year, we had no toys at the time, we skimped on electricity (I think we only had the central air on a few times the entire summer) and of course the kids came out of daycare and I played Mr. Mom. Lastly, we reamortized the mortgage from a 15 year term (again, aggressive was our plan, something we returned to) to a 25 year term which instantly lowered our payments a signifigant amount.
And we made do until I was able to return to work. Having bought a reasonable house, again, certainly made that possible -
had we indulged in the entire amount the bank was willing to give us things would have been far less comfortable. THAT'S the trap people fall into now as several here have touched on including myself.
And we come full circle to getting in over ones head being a big part of the problem, or being unwilling to adjust and compromise because that would make life uncomfortable and some of the comforts of the life they have become accustomed to would have to go.
Now, I will say that as I mentioned earlier...if we are talking a household with 2 minimum wage earners, the picture is different....but as I also mentioned, I tend not to have much understanding for people who made little or zero effort to better themselves in their school age years (including post secondary) in order to achieve a higher paying job, opting to plan on their minimum wage earning "careers" to carry them through life.
Minimum wage jobs are stepping stones, not careers. When people earning $11/Hour complain about not being able to afford rent (much less a house), electricity blah blah blah...sorry, not much sympathy here.
only $650k more to go. I really like the idea of having debt as low as possible. My goal for 2017 is to knock off $80k from the debt pile... I doubt I'll make it but will try.