This research seems pretty obvious, or at least it doesn't tell me anything that's surprising. All I get out of it is that if your policy is to ride really clo

This research seems pretty obvious, or at least it doesn't tell me anything that's surprising. All I get out of it is that if your policy is to ride really close to the edge (between income and spending), and if you have credit available to you, then there will be times when you take on debt. OK, but what else would you expect? Some people are meticulous about finances, and some people aren't. Do you expect the people who aren't meticulous to constantly track both credit card balance and bank balance, then stop making credit purchases the moment they don't have the cash to back it? By definition, it's the sort of thing they don't typically do. With no process to prevent it, of course sometimes the credit card balance will grow larger. In other words, this doesn't really show that debt is the cause of the inability to come up with $400. It might be, if someone cannot reduce their expenses or increase their income, which of course is true for some people. But in general all it means is that they haven't, not that they can't.