Hunting Happiness

There is a post over on CNN.com fretting over an extended recession.

This quotation just about sums it up:

“What happened in the short space of the last five years was pretty scary — household debt rose to about 125% of income. It hadn’t ever been 100% before that. It took consumers a long time to get into these conditions; it’s going to take a long time to get that fixed,” Hampel said.

One side of me understands how folks could feel “irrational exuberance” and over spend. But, come on, spending 125% more than you make?  Sure, there will be some circumstances where that’s expected (e.g. someone in school), but as a national average?  This seems to be a delayed effect of the lack of personal finance literacy in this country.