My family recently hosted a wonderful young man from France through a foreign exchange program. Although we don't speak any French so we occasionally had to try more than once to understand each other, we made it work; and the cultural exchange of information along with a new friendship were well worth the effort.
One day he and my husband were discussing debt and he told my husband that in France the only debt people take on is for big items like cars and houses. (Sounds awfully familiar.) He said that it would never cross his mind to take out a loan for something small like a TV. He actually said that if someone ever talks about taking out a loan for a small item they call it "Going American." I don't know that it's such a great thing to have our country associated with frivolous debt. I can only hope that over time if more and more people are smart about debt that phrase will lose it's meaning and go out of vogue.
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