[StressLess]

I'm beginning to get very cynical about these kinds of shows. The purpose of a tv show is to get people to watch, so advertising can be sold. Advertisers want you to BUY STUFF. It's human nature to see debt this huge and think, well at least I'm not that bad. It makes you feel freer to keep spending, which just happens to be just what the advertisers want you to do.

It's not just the tv shows, either. In Jeffrey's interview on the MoneyBlogger Podcast he mentioned how there are different ways to look at statistics on credit card debt. One that's thrown around a lot in the financial media is that the average cc debt load is around $9000. When my debt was around $4000, hearing that our debt was less than half of the average made me feel like things weren't that bad.

However, there is another figure of around $2000 which indicates the midpoint of credit card debt, where half the people have debt below that amount and half have debt above. When I compare a $4000 personal debt to that, it motivates me to cut back and pay off debt, because my debt level is twice that midpoint.

The media who put out the higher figure all the time, such as magazines and newspapers, are also out to sell advertising to companies who want us to keep on buying.

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but it sure seems like there isn't much motivation for anyone in the mainstream media to truly encourage spending less.