Only the debt collectors are still a social no-no, Mangere Budgeting Centre chief executive Daryl Evans pointed out to me a few months ago.
For those Kiwis living on the breadline, debt is part of their daily reality. But associate professor Lisa McNeill of the school of business at the University of Otago found that much of the debt-fuelled spending by students, supposedly one of the poorest groups in society, wasn't on essentials and their use of credit wasn't a last resort. She also found that "impulsive consumption" is growing in the 18- to 25-year-old group.
The trend is wider than younger Kiwis. Where people in their 40s and 50s would in the past stay put in their family home until it was time to downsize, these days as soon as there's some "spare" equity it's time to trade up, either to a new house or to a renovated or extended existing house. They're no longer satisfied with what they've achieved.
Associate professor Stuart Locke of the Waikato Management School believes middle-aged attitudes are changing because of greater awareness of lavish lifestyles and the availability of easy credit. We all want to live in a palace whether we can afford it or not.
A diet of real-estate and home-renovation television programmes mean we are being exposed to ideas of how to enhance our house and lifestyle with consumer goods, Locke says. When he looks at his own kitchen bench he sees opportunities for upgrading it that his parents may never have considered.
The desire for the lifestyle we see on TV combined with easy credit from banks and other lenders, says Locke, encourages us to spend on credit and get into debt.
That debt may come from credit cards, overdrafts, hire purchase, personal and car loans and other consumer finance, or from mortgages, which people are beginning to view as piggy banks.
When the mortgage is extended to pay off consumer debt, or buy depreciating goods such as cars, it is no longer good debt that is helping grow our wealth. It's what Wood calls destructive debt.
There has been a mind shift and 21st-century thinking is no longer "pay off the mortgage". Instead, says Locke, it's "when I have more equity in my house I have more money to spend".
Even money borrowed for kitchens and bathrooms may be no better than bad/destructive consumer debt because these nice-to-have home improvements often don't increase the value of the house by more than the cost of the work, except in people's dreams.
There has been a mind shift and 21st-century thinking is no longer "pay off the mortgage". Instead, says Locke, it's "when I have more equity in my house I have more money to spend".
Locke watches people around him adding $500,000 or more to their mortgages for the status to be gained from what he calls "opulence in real estate".
We're not only trading up to nicer houses, we want bigger ones as well and are willing to be saddled with the debt to get what we want. Where three bedrooms was once seen as perfectly adequate for a family of four, many people want a media room, spare room and office, or all three. The average size of new homes in New Zealand ballooned from 142.4sq m in 1980 to 205sq m by 2010, according to Quotable Value.
A generation ago, in the 1980s and 90s, home owners paid far higher mortgage interest rates - sometimes 20 per cent or more - and needed a sizeable deposit. Houses weren't so easy to come by and nor were remortgages to extract equity.
Come the noughties, 100 per cent mortgages were available, and over the past decade interest rates have fallen to record lows making borrowing against the house cheap.
Of course borrowing more to upgrade the family home has a different long-term financial impact to borrowing against the family home to buy rental property - although both have risks attached.
Who can blame younger people for basing their financial lives around debt when their parents are salivating over the next house or car upgrade? Just how much young people can't wait to upgrade came out in a focus group of 20-somethings in Auckland organised by what is now the Commission for Financial Capability.
David Kneebone, now general manager at the Hong Kong Investor Education Centre, ran the event before he left New Zealand and was astounded when focus-group participants derided a woman of their own age for admitting that she saved for things she wanted to buy.
The group participants were people who have grown up in a society where paying interest on credit cards month in month out is seen as the norm, not a problem.
What's more, thanks to student loans, we've desensitised younger people to debt.
Once you believe debt is normal, it's easy to get a credit card and overdraft as well.
Social pressure is found to be the key driver of consumption choices in this group, with the majority of spending decisions made impulsively.
McNeill and colleague Sarah Penman found in their paper Spending their way to adulthood: consumption outside the nest, that impulsive consumption was increasing along with credit use among the 18-25-year-olds.
"The young consumers studied show a relaxed attitude to debt and consumer purchasing, with non-essential consumption seen as 'deserved' and a 'reward' for behaviour such as studying or working," they wrote. "Social pressure is found to be the key driver of consumption choices in this group, with the majority of spending decisions made impulsively."
Young people they interviewed saw credit, in the form of credit card limits, bank loans and overdrafts, as a source of "income" for students living away from home.
McNeill and Penman found that disposable goods such as fashion and entertainment items were seen as vital by these students to leading a happy, fulfilled life, and the means by which these goods were accessed was of minor importance.
Overwhelmingly, said McNeill, participants seemed to be able to write off their debt as inconsequential, and as a "means to an end" rather than something to be avoided in the first place.
One 23-year-old commerce student said: "I think of an overdraft as free money. I know eventually I'll have to pay it off but I generally don't think of it as debt."
Changing attitudes to debt aren't limited to New Zealand. In 2007, sociologists Janice Burns and Maire Dwyer noted that there was a worldwide phenomenon that individuals feel wealthier as their homes increase in value, and this, along with the ease of borrowing against revalued homes, leads to increased spending. Their colleague Phil Briggs noted that our high levels of consumption were being sustained by equity withdrawal from houses and farms.
