Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
The question for me isn't so much why people are bad with money. The question is why Canadians have become worse with money than Americans, the British, Dutch, Japanese, Germans, etc.
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I would wager that it is mostly due to the fact that Canada came out of the Housing Credit Recession relatively unscathed.
9 months of recession, and no major depreciation of home values like some other parts of the world saw.
http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...ided_recession
United Kingdom had 15 months of recession. Japan 27. Holland 39 months. US only 12 months, but their housing economy got blasted to an extent that we didn't see here.
If the average person doesn't face life altering hardships they aren't going to see a need to alter their behaviour.
Also I'm not sure I agree with vacations being seen as examples of frivolous spending. I think it must be a lot cheaper to travel now than it was 30 or 40 years ago. You can fly to China direct from Calgary now for about $600-$800. An all-Inclusive to Mexico for a week probably costs about the same as spending a weekend in Banff skiing.