A significant amount of people are born into this world, without any material assets, of which the only notable exceptions are those born into families of money and wealth, that subsequently thereby gift to their children, monies so needed for their education, shelter, transportation and so forth, of varying monetary amounts, which may or may not require some sort of contribution or other conditions expected in return from those children. So then, with the exception of all those fortunate souls that are born into money already, the balance of all other people are going to have to either earn their own keep, and/or see that they are able to get loans so as to help make their own keep.
This thus signifies, that the vast majority of Americans are going to, at some time or another, have to get a loan to purchase a car, as well as to purchase an education, and to purchase a house, in addition to the purchasing of other material items of interest to them. One might think that therefore, since so many Americans must avail themselves of the same sort of things, that each of those Americans would in the course of such, pretty much pay the same price in regards to monetary interest, late fees, penalties, and so on in regards to obtaining that credit; but in fact, that is not the case, whatsoever.
In truth, there is a massive divide between what certain people pay to borrow money and what other people pay, which is dependent upon a few salient factors, of which the most important one is the perceived credit worthiness of that person so borrowing the money, in addition to the sophistication and knowledge that the borrower so has in recognition that just about any loan is negotiable, and further that loans typically come in all sorts of packages, of which some of those packages are more advantageous or more disadvantageous to the borrower than others.
In other words, the cost of money so being borrowed, has an immense material affect upon a given person's life and the quality, thereof, because those that have to pay the piper, a significantly higher interest rate, and/or that suffer periodically from the penalty of being late or delinquent, are going to have extracted from their pocket a heck of a lot more money, then someone that has excellent credit and is on top of their game. That is to say, it literally pays to know how monetary credit actually works, well before a given person has a need for credit, because billions upon billions of dollars in profit are made by institutions, that fundamentally exist to simply lend money, and have no other real skill set other than that.
Further to the point, because of the vast discrepancy in the cost of money, that is, the interest rate so being paid by borrowers of such, of which, such an interest rate is often based upon the credit rating of the borrower, we live within a construct in which those that have stellar credit and are in addition adept at comprehending various loan deals and their structure, are fundamentally subsidized by those that do not; so that in a very real sense, the losers contribute the little that they have to those that already have more than enough, and fall ever further behind because their cost for the borrowing of needed money is significantly higher.