As someone who's been broke and making bad credit decisions to float things along, I'd say it's often a mindset, getting in a mental rut where you just keep doi

As someone who's been broke and making bad credit decisions to float things along, I'd say it's often a mindset, getting in a mental rut where you just keep doing the same thing because it solves the problem for today. I'm not talking here about people who are truly poor and have insufficient income, but people who have money coming in and going out but always seem to be a couple months behind. So lots of stuff goes on credit and costs interest, and they pay a lot of late fees and sometimes overdrafts. But they never fall further behind, so they feel like if they could just get over the hump, they'd be okay. And if you look at their numbers, they're right. But if you handed them a couple months' income so they could get caught up, they'd probably be right back in the same situation within a year, because "barely keeping up" feels normal to them, so the difference between that and "in the black" feels like a buffer they can safely spend down. What it probably takes (what it took for me, anyway) was not just a new job with a regular salary, but a change in mindset, especially starting to keep a budget so I know where every paycheck is going before I get it. I haven't paid a late fee or a dollar in interest (except my mortgage) for five years, and that's saved me thousands of dollars over what I was spending before. Life is expensive when you're broke.