Certainly Canadians who venture down to live in the U.S. say there’s a huge difference in how the two countries approach spending and debt. Gerry Van Boven grew up in southern Ontario but moved to the U.S. in 1985. Now he’s 57 and living in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He says his American friends seem genuinely puzzled by his reluctance to load on huge piles of debt so he can buy a big luxury car and a monster home. “Most of the people that I know who were born and raised here are a lot farther in hock than I am, and they think that’s quite normal,” he says. “They’re like, ‘Can’t afford it? I’ll just put it on plastic.’ Whereas I was brought up to believe that if you can’t afford to buy it in cash, you can’t afford it.”
The numbers confirm that Americans like to spend big. They have bigger homes than we do, averaging about 2,500 sq. feet, compared to only 2,000 sq. feet in Canada. They spend about 34 per cent of their annual household expenditure on their homes, compared to just 19 per cent here. They also love big cars. In the U.S., luxury cars and SUVs make up 21 per cent of the market, whereas in Canada, they make up only 11 per cent. The most popular model overall in the U.S. is the more upscale Toyota Camry, whereas we prefer the basic Honda Civic. “They like the big SUVs here especially,” says Van Boven, “or at least they did. A good friend of mine went out and bought one of those big GMC Yukons a while back, but now gas is at $4 a gallon. I saw him the other day and asked when he was going to get rid of it. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t own it yet.’ “
Bibby, the sociologist, says the great American debt load is a direct result of their relentless quest for the best. “American culture is more consumer-oriented due to a more intense and more vigorous marketplace,” he says. “My sense is that more dollars are spent per capita on advertising, for example. Little wonder then that per capita debt is considerably higher in the U.S. than in Canada. It is largely a function of the aggressive and successful marketing efforts of American companies.” Health care, too, is helping to keep Americans in a state of owe, and for all the same reasons. In the U.S., as long as you have a good insurance plan, you have access to the best health care in the world. MRI machines are available on an hour’s notice, there’s plenty of staff, and the specialists are the finest there are. But all of that comes at a cost, says Van Boven, and every American feels it. “The absolute biggest difference, financially, that I noticed was the cost of health insurance,” he says. “When my wife got laid off, we found out that you could keep the insurance you got through work for a while as long as you paid for it. But it cost $5,000 a year, and that was back in 1986. We couldn’t afford that. So since then I’ve had no health insurance.”
