"Conspicuous Consumption", keeping up with the Joneses and all that. Well, culture and lack of education, too much credit too easy, it's hard for most of them to recognize a car as a wasting asset since they probably don't know what that is. I'd not discount houses though, buying a house twice as big as your old apartment and filling it full of expensive furniture that doesn't have a very long half-life that you bought with a credit card isn't exactly a wise investment either. Your point about cars in cities is a pretty good one though, not a city person myself. I dare say though that if one were trying to guess the probability of someone ending up filing for bankruptcy you could probably pull your most direct indicator from whether or not they owned a Plasma TV and what the ratio of it's viewing area to their annual income was Rural bias, where I am people tend to be more functional with their car purchases, I see a lot less SUVs even though my area has enough snow and dirt roads for them not be absurd, still lots of people who spend too much on them or buy the second vehicle when they don't need it of course.