Do you owe more than $26k, not including a mortgage?

[Thorin]

Well the numbers came from Stats Canada, didn't they?  So not just news copy.

Whether I'm a homeowner or not doesn't make a lick of difference, as the numbers have been aggregated for all people regardless of whether they're homeowners or not.  ON AVERAGE, Canadians own more than four times as many assets as they have liabilities.

You could do a nation-wide or province-wide or city-wide analysis of a large group of people of one general demographic, and collect stats about their total assets and their total debts, and from that get an average [statistic of your choosing] but what I am saying is there are plenty of "average" people that would be very different in the one way, that they do not have a significant asset under their ownership -- specifically a home; they rent. So they are definitely not okay financially if they suffer a surprise job loss, they have no asset that could be potentially worst-case-scenario liquidated to cover their debt load.

Definitely not interested in debating or anything, no need to analyze meaning of the math of analysis or whatever, just speaking in more general terms. Not everybody owns a house/mortgage (or is able to / wants to). And that can mean a big difference when it comes to the impact of life events (even if in virtually every other way they are "close to the average").

As a personal example, I have essentially zero assets except for the car for which I have a multi-year loan to pay off. But I am other than that debt-free. But I am not the norm by any means, plenty of people who rent would have a car loan as well as a ton of credit card debt etc. and surely some of them have RRSPs or other investments, while others are truly living paycheck to paycheck while ALSO having trouble meeting CC minimum payments... Averages are not exactly useful when it comes to analyzing personal finances of Canadians/Albertans/Citytonians. Other than for news copy

What you are doing here is picking a subgroup and then saying that subgroup is below the average for the whole group, and then using that train of thought to say statistics based on the entire group don't apply to individuals.  But they _do_ apply - for instance people who are living paycheque to paycheque, who have trouble paying their bills and owe a whole bunch, are below the average.  So people can look at the stats and say to themselves "I have more debt than average and I have less assets than average, I should try to change that".

The data used by Stats Canada included both homeowners and non-homeowners.  Your suggestion that "there are "average" people that would be very different in one way" (non-homeownership) doesn't hold water, because those very people _are_ included in the statistics.