You don't understand how the majority of people think, financially. If you really looked at the housing credit crisis and why it happened you might understand.
30 years ago, people would save up money for the big ticket items. They would make sure that their income was higher than their expenses by a fairly wide margin and would sock away as much as they could - because they knew that they had to have a savings to cover those unexpected expenses. Like a set of new tires, or a trip to the emergency room to set a broken leg, etc.Today, people don't want to save. They have been taught by a generation of shysters that they want to spend as much as they make because somehow if their money sits in a bank somewhere it gets smaller and smaller. (apparently nobody understands compound interest anymore)
Of course, the problem then is that for this to work it's -imperative- that your expenses are the -same- every month. You cannot have any large unexpected shock expenses.
People will go out and buy a new car that's under warranty and also buy an extended warranty - because doing that, you can finance it all, and your car+warranty payment is now the same every month. You won't have unexpected car expenses because the warranty takes care of that.
Obviously, doing it this way costs people more in the long run, but they would rather pay more as long as the costs are the same every month, than pay less and save the difference to use for the unexpected expenses.
The people replacing Avalanchs with econoboxes are doing it because the fuel price rises are unexpected, and have broken their budget. So, the trade in the Avalanch, get a new econobox, and finance everything. Then their uncontrolled variable expenses - fuel - drop. And their non-variable expenses rise, but not as much because they have financed it and thus pushed the additional expenses into the future.
Look at President Bush. He has pushed most of the Iraq war expenses into the future for Obama to deal with when he becomes president. And I will bet that by then the debt will be so large and the deficit so high that even if he wanted to, Obama will have no choice but to push it into the future for the next president to deal with. And so on and so on.
And your amazed that the common citizen is watching this financial gamesmanship and doesen't want to try copying it himself? Where have YOU been?
Ted