parent here... I own two cars. One I bought outright for $2700 and put about $15k into restoring over the last 5 years. The other is the only substantial debt I

parent here... I own two cars. One I bought outright for $2700 and put about $15k into restoring over the last 5 years. The other is the only substantial debt I have, but I bought it for $30k at 2.99% ...and considered that a good place to put my money. I understood interest rates were about to rise and used car prices wouldn't fall anytime soon. Nothing I did in that regard was something they don't teach you in 9th Grade Macroeconomics. I take small loans if the rate is right because I'm pretty sure I can use that $30k to generate more than 3% a year, so, it's free money. Other than that, I'd never take a loan for anything, ever. That seems to be the fundamental piece of logic most people haven't been acculturated to. Yet... I know a lot of people who are otherwise uneducated (high school, if that) who understand this implicitly. I don't think it's exceptionally American or even related to education level. It's learned by going through actual deprivation and remembering how hard it is to earn every dollar you make. [edit] what I'm referring to here as 'it' is: Never take a loan unless you are sure the value of the money over time in interest or investment favors you. A loan is just a bet that you can do better with that money than the interest rate you have to pay for it. Why don't they explain this to children anymore? [/edit] I'm a 3rd generation American. I've had a view, for my whole life, that America is a machine that turns ambitious producers into lazy consumers over the course of a couple generations. Being ambitious, and producing, is at least as much about making wise decisions with your savings as it is about earning. Personal observation: The immigrant tendency to save their money used to be racially judged and regarded as a type of "cheap" "hoarding" - always, of course, by the 3+ gen stock of old money. But the phrase "a fool and his money are soon separated" is as true today as it ever was: the tendency of the children of the rich to be idiots and blow it all is the greatest bulwark against generational wealth we possess in a free market democracy. Far more effective than any tax. Deprivation is key not just to the hunger to create, but the hunger to conserve. It has to be experienced or taught.