Thanks to a soaring stock market, the wealthy are feeling very good about things right now, but the rest of the country is really hurting.  Homelessness is rising at the fastest pace ever recorded, the number of children that are suffering from hunger is rapidly growing, and more than 60 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  The mainstream media continues to insist that the economy is in good shape, but how can that possibly be true if nearly two-thirds of the entire nation is just barely scraping by?  According to brand new numbers that were just released, the percentage of U.S. adults that live paycheck to paycheck has actually increased by 4 percent just since the month of March…

• Sixty-two percent of adults in December said they live paycheck to paycheck, up from 58 percent in March.
• Forty percent of consumers living paycheck to paycheck have super-prime credit scores.
• Fifty-seven percent of consumers who own credit cards are living paycheck to paycheck.

Yikes!

But even though most of the country is living on the edge financially, 96 percent of shoppers say that they plan to “overspend” this holiday season…

This year, holiday spending from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31 is expected to increase between 3% and 4% over last year to a record total of $957.3 billion to $966.6 billion, according to the National Retail Federation.

Even as credit card debt tops $1 trillion, almost all — or 96% — of shoppers said they expect to overspend this season, a separate TD Bank survey found.

Half of consumers plan to take on more debt to cover those holiday expenses, according to another report by Ally Bank. Only 23% have a plan to pay it off within one to two months.

Are you kidding me?

Needless to say, those numbers are yet another confirmation of what I wrote about yesterday.

We just can’t help ourselves.

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