Overspending On Self-Care A Reason Behind Growing American Debt

One of America's favorite pastimes, along with baseball and filing lawsuits, is raking up tremendous debt. That does not just apply to the federal level, which currently sits in a $37 trillion hole. American citizens have also been racking up extraordinary amount of credit card debt, and other forms of owed money. It has been reaching record highs in recent years, as people continue spending themselves into a deeper pit.

People are spending of course on essentials. Food, housing, clothing, their vehicle. All necessary expenses. But the problem comes with the unnecessary or 'luxury' expenses. We have cultivated an ideology in the country of treating yourself on a regular basis. Which, occasionally, is not a bad thing. We all deserve some nice things in the rigors of life. But people have been taking it too far, and it is creating more debt than we have ever seen.

Financial planner Bill Dendy says this is somewhat a case of monkey see, monkey do. Because the government overspends, Americans believe it is okay for them to as well.

"We as individuals have accumulated a lot of debt...and a lot of that is because we do not want to make hard decisions. It is very similar with our national debt. We do not want to make hard decisions and want to have everything," he says.

Again, this is not to say we do not deserve to splurge now and then. A movie, a nice trip, a little fun excursion, we all deserve that when dealing with whatever life decides to throw. But when you take a page out of people like Gen Z, who are financing payment plans for tickets to Coachella, then it starts becoming an issue.

It has become a social fault that just because we had a bad day, we deserve to spend $2,000 on ourselves. That is a problem.

"We do not want to wait until some day in the future, we should have fun now...so we consume to fill out needs and unfortunately, some people consume as their favorite pastime sport," says Dendy.

We spend to fill our desires instead of our actual needs, and that is when you can rack up tremendous debt.

While we cannot fix overspending on the federal level, we can control our own. That starts by making difficult choices and maybe canceling that HBO subscription you barely watch. Because that is true financial sensibility, something we lack desperately in America.

"What looks like making a sacrifice can actually be done without making sacrifice...and therefore give us more choices in the future," Dendy says.

Dendy adds that the less we respect money, the more debt and worry we will accrue.