American consumers’ spending habits have received criticism across the board from financial experts to online bloggers. Moreover, every now and then we hear about a pop star going bankrupt. But writing on this topic once again is necessary when you consider the ground realities.

I’ve become better at predicting the future or should I say, plotting out what might happen based on a choice I’ve made. I’ve developed this through trial and error. Thankfully, many of my poor choices occurred when I was young and I had time to repair them. That’s not the case for an old friend. He knowingly made one terrible choice many years ago and has been paying for it ever since.

Mortgage insurance may mean different things to different people – some people may see it as a life insurance policy that clears any outstanding mortgage debt in the event of your death, while others may think that is relates to protecting your mortgage repayments in the event that you lose your income.

The modern expansion of consumer choice, largely due to our globalized economy which allows the overseas manufacturing of cheaper goods of all sorts, has had two seemingly contradictory effects: while making new goods a lot more affordable and easily replaceable for many people, it has created a much larger market for second-hand products.

So far, 2013 has been a year of good fortune for me so far (knock on wood, right?) I’ve had a couple of unexpected jobs pop up that have allowed me to pay down some of the credit card debt I racked up last year and I’m really close to a salary increase of monumental proportions (I’ll have more information on that in the next 3 weeks).