I don’t know what it is with the media and their need to sensationalize that which is sensational enough.  In the past week i have seen two headlines that completely misrepresented the article.  One said that Americans have more debt on their credit cards and “few” pay on time.  What the article really said is that “fewer” are making on time payments.  You can see that there’s room for a huge difference in real numbers there.

Another (also having to do with credit card debt) said that Americans charge up their cards because they don’t understand debt.  What the article was really about was that Americans don’t usually know the formula for compound interest off the tops of their heads.  Now there’s a shock.  It does not follow that we don’t understand debt, though.

That particular article based it’s conclusions on some study that presented people with questions about how long it would take to pay off debt.  Then (and I mean immediately after, without answering the question presented) it said  a “full 18.6%” (a number that’s not full) didn’t know how to respond to how long it would take for their balance to double.  It doesn’t say how the question was worded or what the possible answers were so I find I don’t know how to respond to this report except with a degree of doubt since many factors could effect how long it takes for a balance to double.

It’s SOOO annoying when they write articles that seem to have edited out every other sentence and end up providing nothing similar to information.