From the article: "She goes without a savings account and regularly relies on credit cards to buy toilet paper and soap." Maintaining a relatively constant cre

From the article: "She goes without a savings account and regularly relies on credit cards to buy toilet paper and soap." Maintaining a relatively constant credit card debt (which is what it usually meant by "relying on credit cards" for routine purchases) is often more of a financial literacy problem than an income problem. It's obviously harder to get out of this trap on a low income, but if you're servicing your debt -- and if you're living off of credit cards long-term you have to be -- then your average income actually matches your average expenditures, including credit card interest charges. Someone in that situation would be so much better off if they could just pull together the few $1000's necessary to pay off the debt, and then start slowly accumulating savings from the money that would otherwise go towards interest payments. Unfortunately, the people I know who live on credit card debt seem willing to spend any small windfall that comes their way immediately, instead of using it to pay down those high-interest loans and start saving. I have a brother-in-law who's in this situation. He makes $90k and has no dependents, but seems to have constant credit card debt that fluctuates between $10-$20k. That's an extra $1500-$3000 free and clear he could have every year by just paying off his cards and pocketing those interest payments, but for whatever reason he sees things differently and is totally content to carry that balance indefinitely.