you overestimate the financial health of most Americans.

most people live on credit cards as bridge finance between paychecks. when I mean most people - I mean 50% of the population.

The median US household has a net worth of $200,000. Even a 50th percentile US household is very wealthy by global standards.

Credit card statistics are heavily manipulated because it's easy to make them sound terrible. I don't know which factoid specifically you're referring to, but the studies about "X percent of Americans couldn't handle an emergency expense without putting it on a credit card" often use tricks like including anyone who would pay by credit card if they could. I remember reading some of these studies and realizing that I would have been included in the statistic because I prefer to use a credit card where I can, even though I pay it off before interest accrues.

>when I mean most people - I mean 50% of the population.

That's not really applicable because:

1. the study is for an "unexpected" expense. This you can see from 2 years away

2. The wording in the study was something along the lines of "would have to dip into savings", not that they literally don't have any money for it. The fed's survey of consumer finances shows the median household has between 7-13k (depending whether you're counting median income or median wealth) in their checking accounts

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart...

There are phones that cost a lot less though. 50% of Americans being unable to afford iPhones doesn't mean they should just lease them. People need to stop associating so much personal sense of worth with their handheld computer.

- written on my S10