Over a third of adults say that if they had a $400 expense (i.e. sudden medical bill), they'd either simply go broke, or have to go into debt and put it on their credit card while carrying the balance month-to-month because they had no other means of paying it.
Nearly half of Gen Z has resorted to using buy now pay later services to buy groceries, and more than one in ten people you meet are in poverty.
49% of households with credit cards consider carrying a balance because they can't pay it off in full "normal" to them. And remember, essentially all of these statistics have to do with people that have essentially no savings, and no real income left after expenses at that point. They're not even truly enjoying themselves after spending so much of their time on labor, they're just making enough to live at bare minimum and that's it.
Most Americans are absolutely struggling.