I've always had a major concern, since my 20's, with personal finance. People in the U.S. are ignorant of financial basics, including compound interest (don't understand how a small bill can cause an exponential increase in their interest due).
People are delinquent for all the reasons you can think of. There was a study done about 6 months ago (for what it's worth), that stated that approximately a third of people 'forgot' to pay their bill, another third needed the money for 'essentials', another third had an unexpected emergency. You might be aware that one of the largest causes of bankruptcy is medical expense. People max their cards out to pay for medical related expenses.
Of course, there are people that simply don't understand finances and just rack of their credit bills with no thought. But we also know wages have stagnated in this country for 20 years, but the cost of everything has gone up. More and more people simply can't pay their basic bills, even though they are not doing anything 'extravagant'.
I can't figure out when the debt bubble will burst. I'm a long-term investor who has been concerned with debt and deficit for the country, as well as personal debt, for decades, and the credit just keeps on rolling. I don't know how it will end.
Personally, I use cc's to pay for everything, including utilities, and everything is automatically paid. I just keep racking up the cash rewards, have an close-to-perfect credit score, and have never, in 40+ years of using cc's, ever paid a penny in interest. I've been fortunate.
