Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input.

Why do people buy new cars they can not afford? 
Most people today (and maybe regardless of era) are irrational and don't properly valuate many of their purchases, nor are they emotionally equipped to do the math properly, including projection into the future and applying probabilities. This compounds.  Imagine that each individual is bound to others by a rubber band and can stretch in a certain direction.  The more your neighbors stretch, the more you are both motivated to stretch and able to stretch.  These are crudely analogous to consumer wants as well as allowed consumer debt.  The banks are also within this network of rubber bands and much of their balance sheet is based on how far they've stretched on the aggregate of all connected bands (counting others debts as their credit because it will presumably be repaid), and every so often enough people's feet slip that a lot of rubber bands snap back.  This is a bubble bursting.