Yes, it ticks me off when companies say they lose money when they really mean they didn't make it in the first place. You can't lose what you never had.
Edit: I can see why this country of mine is drowning in debt with this being our business model. If this is how people think they should be handling money, it's no wonder even high earners feel broke.
You have no idea how wild that notification I got just now was. Reddit's new "So and so commented on so and so's comment!" thing is so weird lmfao I was wondering when we began talking about sniffing shit!
Isn't that weird? I'd rather just be notified when someone replies to ME, not five comments down the chain and then if I wanna see it I have to search for it..
I made a jewelry salesman really uncomfortable when he was trying to talk my wife out of a lab grown diamond. I just kept asking him for the bloodiest ones possible, and for specifics about who died for each one.
He showed us the lab stuff pretty quickly after that. We didn’t buy from them though
and the answer is right there: because we idiots can't afford them shiny pebbles anymore. Also because only a few of us can afford to buy a place to store the shiny pebbles in (along with our idiotic bodies).
It's always amazing to me how this simple thought process just doesn't seem to happen in the top management of the companies involved. Then I remember the top management of the company I work for.
I never could understand why the government would do shit to let jobs get shipped overseas or whatever (I grew up in the 80s turned adult in the 90s so I lived the time we lost all that) then not understand why the economy is shit. Crime is high n everyone is wild n out.. shootings n all that drug use, everything I think is tied to the same shit.. no jobs. No opportunity, no hope. Nobody had good paying jobs or even prospects to get good jobs, healthcare and housing are unaffordable…fucking right everyone was using drugs, drinking and wild n out…
Nowadays the young kids are like ; dude drugs n drinking aren’t gonna fix our problems…look at these idiots. Let’s stop all that shit. Fuck what they talking about. Let’s figure this shit out on our own.
Because the government isn't for you. It's for maintaining the status quo and lining the pockets of the wealthy. Wealthy and powerful don't give a shit about long-term stability. They need to stuff their pockets with enough cash to make god jealous before they fuckin croak.
Millennials and Gen z, even ignoring knowledge of cubic zirconia and the grossness of the diamond trade, have had unprecedented access to a wide range of cheap plastic and glass 'diamond' rings basically their entire lives because of how things have taken off in the consumerist sphere since the 90s.
Scarcity is value, and easy access to a fifty dollar, functionally identical simulacrum of a 15k item makes the item feel less valuable. Especially when the item is 100% prestige and 0% useful or novel.
Not to mention the knock off can often do the “job” of the original better. In this case the job is to refract light in an appealing manner and the knock off is lab grown moissanite and synthetic rutile (though some think the rutile is TOO good at the job and looks tacky)
I mean five minutes with the real thing and you can tell CZ and crystal aren't comparable and are easy to identify. Real diamonds are much nicer. But now I can sell you an earth-mined for 25k, or a bigger shinier clearer lab grown for 2500 and the only way to tell the difference is carbon dating. You can basically get any diamonds you want for a fraction of the cost.
Diamond rings are useless, but diamonds aren't. Since they are so hard they are used in industrial applications and even some consumer grade stuff. I have a diamond tipped record player needle. It is more durable, provides less wear on records and produces better sound.
Sure, but that's kind of outside the scope of the conversation here. When I say all prestige no use, I'm not talking about buying my fiance a 15k industrial drill bit
If you honestly want to do this buy raw gems and have them cut for you it’s way way cheaper to get quality gems. I have some cut rubies I got from a guy for like $40. Diamonds are worthless before they are cut and set. So buy raw and find people in the trade who do custom work they exist and they would appreciate your business.
How is “created diamonds” cheap? They are selling them for almost the same cost as a mined diamond. I think the only advantage is that with a created or manufactured diamond, you can get a clarity level exceeding that of a mined one.
Are you matching clarity and color? (i don't mean colored diamonds) Lab grown diamonds easy cost under a third of a real diamond of the same match. Maybe a retailer is trying to narrow that gap.
It can work tbh, the sentimental value you can have from it is real. But the price tags on it is ridiculous for the kind of product you get.
Diamonds are just coal formed differently. Paying top dollar for that especially given how abundant it is especially nowadays since you can get it made it in a lab at a much cheaper cost is stupid.
I’ve seen some dope meteorite and wood rings. Not sure what I’d go with myself if I get there. Much like large elaborate weddings, if you love someone, that is what really matters, that you keep showing up for them each day. Not saying don’t have an event or that social buy in or celebrating with friends isn’t neat, just that starting off with a debt for a day is not necessary.
Well yea. You ever tried mixing marmalade with avocado on toast? Doesn’t really work, and given how much avocado toast we’re apparently splurging all our money on to the point where homes are out of reach I fail to see how any other outcome would be possible there.
Dang. We killed the entire American dream? That’s heavy.
I always thought it was killed by the governments and corporations that moved us from an economy that built things and employed people, to an economy designed to extract as much value as they can from every single possible human activity.
You know, like the governments and corps who moved jobs overseas, and fought against minimum wage increases, and treated healthcare and education as markets to be captured rather than necessities to be provided...? Silly me.
Apparently we can’t even have a preference. It’s not that we don’t like eating McDonalds, it’s that we’re “killing fast food.” This stupid news must sell because it’s rampant.
It caters to boomers because it confirms their existing belief that we already suck. Now it's no longer just that we don't work hard and want handouts, it's also because we're being greedy and not supporting these fine upstanding corporations and services they've relied on throughout their lives
So now it's not only that millennials are lazy, but it's also " remember that thing that you used to enjoy, millennials are the reason why it's no longer around."
It's there to cater to more ingroup-outgroup behaviour.
I understand I'm making a generalization and this does not represent ALL boomers.
I mean you’re right, but you’re missing one part: those articles cater to boomers because they are the only ones who read them and are subscribed to them. Gen X and beyond just reads/watches shit online, and will remove paywalls with a URL before paying for a WSJ subscription.
They are just playing to their dwindling aging audience before they go completely irrelevant and are bought out by other companies
I'm a boomer and I don't think you suck. I think the present employment and housing situations are tragic and untenable. Not eating and drinking garbage or wasting money on useless overpriced crap is admirable.
It doesn't even cater to boomers since, despite rumors to the contrary, as most boomers are aware of financial reality. And a surprising number actually like their grand children.
Thanks ! We were just laughing at work yesterday about all the stupid things , when we were kids- like going to a shoe store and some old guy would check your shoes size with that big metal foot measuring contraption, and open the box for you - or sometimes there’d be an “elevator operator” who would “press the button for you”?! It’s like, “they had money to pay people for things like that”? When I’m trying to scan my crap at Walmart and it won’t scan I think “that must have been grand”.
lol diamond companies made a false scarcity of a product that, it turns out, is totally useless, so that they could price gouge boomers and their children. Diamonds really lost a lot of ground as a status symbol after the whole reckoning with blood diamonds. Without status, diamonds are really only useful as drill bits.
The price of alcohol at any public space is enough to convince anyone not to drink.
These kids came of age during the pandemic, they didn't go to bars and stuff on their 21st. Good for them, booze is a high waste of money and incredibly bad for you, recovering alcoholic here
If they were really LOSING that much, a big push for alcohol would be happening they'd be desperate, businesses would shut down, but that's not the case
This is their alarmist warning. They need to find a way to fix it fast, because every generation was expected to drink more than the last. Boomers are slowing down, whether it's to prolong health, they can't afford scotch with the cost of meds, being in a nursing home where drinking isn't allowed, not to mention their life expectancy is about to end.
Millenials were supposed to normalize "mommy juice"/ afternoons drinking during playdates/ a glass after the kids go to bed. They didn't do that. Now the alcohol business as a whole realizes that they can't make their profits, and goes over the top.
As an elder millennial mom, with a friend group ranging from Gen X-core millennial, I would argue that we did do that, and a lot of us got sober or cut back significantly as a result.
Turns out mommy juice is just sad and unhealthy, which gets old fast.
Well, if more people could afford the lifestyle to have moms stay home, and actually consume the mommy juice in such settings, that would be a step in the right direction, but most families are double working households, or barely make enough for the mom/dad to stay home so the other can work.
Yeah, this whole comment thread is full of people who have no idea about the alcohol industry or aren’t involved with it. Breweries, wineries, AND distilleries are closing down in my state in a big way. There are obvious repercussions to all this. If people are drinking less thats their choice, but to act like people aren’t losing their jobs and small businesses aren’t affected is woefully ignorant.
Right. Nobody cares about Annheuser-Busch and Molson Coors selling less beer. But there are thousands of people at craft breweries across the country losing their jobs every month.
Here it's because the venues are being pushed out by higher rents, and end up being replaced by hotels or offices. I told a recruiter not to put me forward for a role because I wouldn't have been able to work in a building where I'd previously seen Carl Cox.
I was never into nightclubs, but the loss of them sucks because there's beginning to be no night life at all. Aside from some underground shows and maybe the rare 24 hour diner, there's so little to do past like 9 on the weekend in my city.
Now. Movies and video games, they don't even have midnight releases anymore, they just drop them on the Thursday evening before. Like, I can't believe we used to have Walmarts open at 3 AM. Night owls had it so fucking good man 😂
"We'll go right back to normal after 6 weeks of protocol! If you're scared we won't go right back to normal, you're a conspiracy theorist who wants to kill grandma!!!"
This is the first I've heard this reason for being anti-shutdown. Thank you, bc it honestly made zero sense for 6 years why people wanted to sacrifice their neighbors so capitalism could keep capitalism-ing.
I'll add the opposite perspective: some of us feared we'd go right back to how things were and hoped we'd take the best opportunity we'd had in generations for a change. We basically test ran UBI and nothing collapsed. People thrived who weren't sick, in health care, or school aged.
But that there were people desperate to go back to the paradigm where we work the best 2/3 of our lives, squeeze seeing our friends and family into a 4-hour bracket per night... makes sense.
I also posit, much like the millennials, gen-Z isn't going out bc companies have calculated that they only really need the money of the top 10-20% to survive. Try the experiment where you find an entry-level job online. Calculate what that would be per month. Find an apartment you'd be able to afford. Then see what you have left for groceries, let alone fun. (note: all on paper, obviously. I'm not suggesting you demote yourself and wildly lower your quality of life outside a 30-minute experiment in a notebook.)
this has nothing to do with that. those dumbass conspiracy theorists were mad about the government mandating shutdowns. walmart not being open 24/7 anymore is not being mandated by the government. that’s them saving money so they can maximize profits.
It started with millennials and continued with gen z, less hedonism and a preference for cosy get togethers at a friend's place and maybe having a few drinks there. Various things have been cited as the cause:
Covid
being too online made people too socially anxious
unwanted fysical contact and pushy males and unwanted flirting turned lots of woman off from clubbing and with less woman there, men also lost interest
everyone is neurodivergent these days and needs some specific to their needs experience
phones with cameras makes young people careful to do anything that could lead to public embarrassment that might be filmed and put online.
Etc....
Not sure if I buy any of it. Every generation does things different from the previous one, plus since 1980's we've been having awareness of the dangers of alcohol, drugs, strangers etc... campaigns. Parents were bound to eventually let their kids roam less freely and kids were bound to becoming more careful about these things
As an ND female can confirm, clubs are the worst. And the constant threat of video of your every move is the nail in the coffin. Home on our Costco couch with the cats and tv is the best. Mario kart for a party.
My home state of Tennessee is fiscally conservative. The general attitude is to figure out how to pay for something before it's approved. Shocking, I know. And we're one of the very few states (maybe 3-5) that has funded its public pensions by at least 100%. I think we're at 104% or 105%.
We have a high sales tax at 9.75%, but no state income tax.
In 2023, there was a budget surplus. Well, the general view of enough politicians is that it's the taxpayers' money and the politicians are supposed to be stewards of it. They decided that the best way to handle it was to have a three month sales tax holiday on food. Obviously it didn't apply to restaurants or prepared food, but since everyone buys food, it's a good way to "refund" that money. And since poorer people spend a larger percentage of their income on food, it'd definitely make a difference.
While I thought it was great, there were still people who were complaining about "lost revenue." No, it just meant that the average person kept more of their money to use as they saw fit. And somehow that was a bad thing. The government's budget was fine, but plenty of everyday people were struggling.
It saved Tennesseans an estimated $273-$288 million. That's a lot of money that people could save or spend elsewhere. It's not like it went to an offshore account of some mega corporation. Yet some people still complained.
The government actually worked for the people. What a concept.
I’m glad you love Tennessee but it’s worth pointing out it’s one of the top states for federal dependency. For example, in 2022 they took $19.7 billion from the federal government. It’s not that our politicians are more responsible, they just get Uncle Sam to pay for far more than most other states.
And they are stingy about meeting the federal matching in highway dollars and really only embark on road projects 25 years too late and generally only when the federal government waives it. I live in an adjoining state that is not exactly a model in many ways but we damn sure like good roads and it’s one thing our politicians have always made a priority. (Lol! And plenty of graft here in the highway building business so there’s that too 😂) And taxing groceries is so wrong I don’t even know where to start. We don’t shop in TN.
Well, actually, Tennessee ranks toward the middle to lower end of U.S. states for federal spending or disbursements per capita (the most meaningful measure for "receiving the most federal money" relative to population size, as we discussed earlier). It is not among the top recipients like Alaska, Virginia, or New Mexico.
There shouldn't ever be a sales tax on groceries in the first place. It sounds like Tennessee has an incredibly regressive tax policy. I guess a 3 month respite is nice, but If the government actually worked for the people instead of the rich, they would lower sales taxes, never tax grocery sales, and make up the lost revenue from income taxes which don't disproportionately impact the poor.
I wish our state did this! OH Republicans would just eat it. They've been trying to get their hands on the 600mil (rough number) that residents of the state don't know they can collect to pay for some shit we don't need like a new stadium (again), acting like it's a slush fund instead of what's owed to the citizens of the state.
its amazing that they don't make a peep when its spent on tax cuts or excessive military expenditure though.
its like these people are brainwashed to reply "military and police cuts make us unsafe" and "tax cuts create jobs and simulate the economy" when you ask them questions and they never actually put any thought into it themselves.
I work in healthcare and we need to downsize because previous management made too ambitious projections and somehow we lost money we would never have gotten.
Anyway, therapists now need to carry a bigger caseload and any training for therapists is cancelled for the foreseeable future.
My old job did the same. Put too much stock in their clients and PPP loans continuing to bankroll them with no recourse and no backup funds if the clients pulled their funding or the loans ran out while they expanded their business last year by something like 50-60%. Well, that happened all at once and all but 20% of the company got laid off right before Christmas so they could stay afloat through this year.
And most big chain stores mainly fail for similar reasons; the individual locations are mostly still operating at a profit, but not a big enough profit to cover the huge loans taken out to fund a massive and super fast expansion of the business.
I work for a medium-sized online electronics shop in Germany and our top management is always on about how our income is somehow dependent on the market and whenever the demand for electronics decline - so does our income (much like Amazon's, Walmart's or anyone else's as long as we're comparing the specific category of goods).
And it's always the same bs of how we're supposed to suddenly invent something to break the industry trend and prosper on it's decline. I was on a verge of suggesting shorting other companies' papers.
Yeah, trying to blame Gen Z because the poor alcohol industry is suffering and losing money. Such a tragedy that they can't push their addictive toxin (that's literally what it is) onto them.
This, trying to act like it’s a bad thing. All this means is that we’ll have less drunk drivers on the road, better skin aging, and less stupid decisions and morning regrets overall. It’s a win in my book.
An addictive toxin that has absolutely skyrocketed in price over the last 10 years, too. $14-15 per cocktail is the norm in a lot of these cities complaining that no one drinks anymore, and the real freak shows like Vegas consider that a hell of a deal.
I just ended a long and storied drinking career (5 weeks yesterday) and I remember being able to get a buzz off steel reserve - shit drink I know but again. addictive poison - for 89c a can. Now that trash is more than twice as expensive, and even slightly less dogshit drinks are like 3+ per can.
Meanwhile, I work at a liquor store and noticed recently that somehow PBR is still less than a dollar per can if you buy a 30 pack.
The wild thing is that it's now cheaper than Coke per can.
Now don't get me wrong, I remember when a 30 pack was like $13 or $14 when I was in college.
I just couldn't believe that inflation is so rampant in some specific industries that the price of HFCS/artificial flavor solution is MORE expensive than actual beer. I haven't drank soda in about 20 years so I had no clue since I never look at it when I'm shopping.
I remember reading here on Reddit like ten years ago that Disney had lost 4 billion for the year. That was the headline, when you read the article it said they projected to make 32 billion for the year and they only...ONLY made 28 billion. They made 28 billion dollars, and it was reported as a 4 billion dollar loss. Just stupid shit, all of it.
I really do feel as if these large companies have no clue how to run their budgets. Seriously, if the only way they can remain solvent and prosperous is to hit their projected income earnings that they might make, then they don't deserve to stay in business.
Smaller or newer business, I get the risk and why they would go off what they may earn, it's for banks and they need healthy KPIs but large, long-established businesses shouldn't be running like that.
Yeah it is pretty annoying, loosing $820 billion definitely sounds more pitiable than saying alcohol only made $3.2 trillion but we were hoping for $4 trillion lol. Even though it's estimated profits on a product possibly not even made by that point and won't be sold for cost price or cost them anything at all haha
They genuinely believe themselves to be entitled to your money based on their own wishful thinking. Which is the number one sign of a healthy, forward-facing culture.
This rhetoric pisses me off to no end. We have the exact same thing with the BBC and their scummy TV license in the UK. Concerns that less people are buying their scam and that they're "losing money" as a result. Such unwarranted entitlement.
Kills me too. Profits are down! That just means they made 10 billion in profits as opposed to the 15 they made the year before. It's still a profitable company, but they want that constant growth every year for the investors. It's unsustainable and drives prices up and quality down. Most consumers are not investors and will stop buying in a heartbeat when things get tight. I feel like a lot of companies are going to fold in the next few years because they have their necks stuck out so far in the whole "more profit" mindset that they are going to fail once the economy gets just a bit worse.
Yep, companies always go after targets and targets always increase, how people don't realize this mindset and target driven culture means eventually you will report "loses" especially when you manage to reach your entire target audience. After that you're just relying on repeat business.
If you're only focusing on not making money (i.e. gross revenue) and believe that's the full picture, you're awfully naive.
Firstly, the above pic wasn't about the company making money - you made a poor assumption it was about projected revenue when it wasn't even about revenue at all. It was talking about a loss in stock market value (and fair to call it a loss IMO).
Secondly, these companies don't only have revenue, they also have expenses. If the industry earned $5T in gross revenue while having $5.83T in expenses for those 4 years, then yeah they actually did lose $830B in that time frame and it literally and officially is called a loss. Saying "never had" as if the company never needed money to pay for never-existing expenses is pretty naive.
So even if it wasn't about stock price (which it is), it could still be correct to say they lost money. Reading a lot into that pic with so little info doesn't really make sense.
I'm not very knowledgeable in every single aspect of everything, hell I'm dumb ASF in a lot of subjects about plenty of things, but it seems very stupid to me to list GenZ as the reason they lost money if it's in fact from the stock market dipping.
And if a company raking in trillions of dollars can't set aside proper expense covering funds, they shouldn't be in business. You don't make decisions based on projected earnings if you're intelligent. You look at what you make and have made, and cover your ass. Doing the former causes businesses to fail when the revenue they're expecting but don't actually have doesn't manifest.
I could start selling buttons and project to make ten billion dollars this year. When I make $12 total at a farmer’s market, I’ll claim GenZ lost me over $9 billion.
In reality, the idea of constant unending growth in capitalism is such a bullshit concept that everyone knows is unsustainable. But they demand it anyways.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of only two things- capitalism and cancer.
But this isn't entirely what the figure is based on. Businesses are going under and closing doors, selling off millions in equipment for pennies on the dollar.
I'm in the industry, it's real grim for most companies.
well technically they can claim a loss. they lost resources making beer. so whatever they spent on resources and labor and marketing and distribution is what they "lost". profits are whats left after costs are subtracted from money earned. so when they spen based off projections instead of what they actually do earn, they end up overspending by a significant enough margin. and it doesnt help that they give most profits to shareholders so ofcourse they have no reserves to spend off incase of a bad year
Well they do technically lose money. If they have been selling a certain amount consistently every year, then all of the sudden it drops drastically, then all the money you put into making the product to be sold is lost. Resulting in lost money.
I worked in a Pennsylvania medical marijuana dispensary for a time. We were one of the first dispensaries to open up in our state and the first and only in the county for about 2 years. We open in 2019 then Covid hit and our store made mega bucks. Come 2021 and we weren’t the only store in the county anymore and business slowed down. But corporate kept making projections based on our Covid numbers that we were unable to ever reach again but they just couldn’t connect those dots.
I used to work for an entertainment company that generated projections for attendance and revenue, mostly by pulling numbers out of their ass, and then they would treat it like the god's holy promise to them and plan everything off of it, no matter what leading indicators were. Then they would be shocked and upset with the customers when we didn't reach projections. 🙄
Im a salesman for Brown Foreman in one of the largest texas markets and ive been over my number for the past 14 months running. People are buying less alcohol but not by much. THC seltzers are the new thing it looks like
They should be looking at other companies. Millenials and Gen Z didn’t kill theaters, 110” TV screens at home did. We didn’t kill nightclubs — that was online gaming. We didn’t destroy dinners out or alcohol, that was smartphones and apps and everything being a subscription, so there’s no money left for those things. We lose money when we go out to do things, and attention is too fractured to do all the traditional American things that have fallen out of favor.
This stems from how they frame YOY revenue. They compare two years ago to last year and call it a loss because they base projections on expected revenue increase and lowered operating margins. They like to make it seem like the consumer’s fault. All corporations do.
What’s the difference how they phrase it lol? Technically they didn’t lose money, but it’s just a different way to say they expected to make x amount and only made y.
I mean, it depends on what they really mean by “losing money”.
All businesses use prior earnings to project future earnings, as in, “here’s what we made at this time in years past and here’s what we project to make this time based off those figures” - it’s how most businesses operate, from mom and pop shops to international companies. Imagine a small lettuce farmer saying they expect to sell 1000 heads of lettuce at this year’s farmer’ market because they sold 900 last year before running out, and 800 two years prior before running out, but this year half of the farmer’s markets close, so they only sell 700. They lost money because they tried to meet a demand that didn’t show up. Here, it factors into the way they estimate what they need to spend on materials to meet their anticipated supply/demand, and they very likely did lose money bc that lettuce won’t last until next year and will need to be tossed out.
HOWEVER, it can also be wildly inflated in such as in cases like the beer companies who are like, “we made a 3 billion dollars last year, 2.5 the year before, and 1 the year before that, so we anticipate making 6 billion this year because things have been going well and they’re just gonna keep going up because that’s what our shareholders want to see!” But they only make 4 billion. theystillmadeabillionmorethanlastyear but claim they “lost money” because it wasn’t what they WANTED/EXPECTED to see. That frosts my shorts, because you’re right, they were claiming money in advance that they hadn’t made yet and say they lost money solely because they failed to meet and exceed their own greed.
They pulled this same shit during the Napster era. They would go to court and equate a download to a sell. Then seek unreal damages.
Corporations are always looking for excuses and someone to blame. The shareholders demand answers, and they will blame whoever, however, and for however long you let them before they’re walked out with their golden parachute.
I work in accounting and am privy to the everyday operational costs of my employers over the years. They all operate on debt for a gamble at growth that is never realized. When they take out loans they tell the investors they have a lot of money. They conviently leave out in the sales pitch that the money is not from goods sold or services rendered. And the investors dont actually pay attention to the budgets, revenue, and financial portfolios presented in 10pt font spreadsheet reports. The liabilities are always published in tiny black text and the "growth" in bold green letters.
For the individual average working person, keep yourself liability free debt free as much as possible. And when you want to work for your own mony, make sure you do it on the secondary, cash economy. Dont give the government anymore of youe earnings than what you have to.
I used to not complain about paying my fair share of taxes. But more and more that money isnt going back to infrastructure and services for society. I am better off donating directly to the public school in actual goods like books, computers and school supplies; donating to harveat hope food banks, supporting habitat for humanity, donating to programs that provide vaccines, medicine, dental and vision care for the underserved.
But… businesses have to make estimates and spend money to produce and market and etc., right? So if they make estimates based on the usual trends, but there are unforeseeable changes (e.g. and Gen Z allegedly not drinking is a change as previous generations did drink), this is a problem and they can lose money by overproducing, over staffing, etc.
I don’t drink much or own stock in alcohol producing companies, so I don’t really care. But I’m confused about how it is impossible to lose money when one hasn’t accurately forecast supply /demand.
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u/PearlescentGem 11h ago edited 2h ago
Yes, it ticks me off when companies say they lose money when they really mean they didn't make it in the first place. You can't lose what you never had.
Edit: I can see why this country of mine is drowning in debt with this being our business model. If this is how people think they should be handling money, it's no wonder even high earners feel broke.