Food, medicine, shelter, fuel. I would venture that most of these people could survive without them, but have chosen to invest in them for sometimes valid reasons. I imagine that very few of these customers thought about their purchases as being investments, yet they were. Every single one of them. When you define investing as broadly as this, it can make some expenditures seem absurd.
Many people are in debt right now.
According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Americans have more debt as a percentage of income than at any time in our history. And yes, every expenditure that you make on your credit card is also an investment, one that has the added penalty of being paid out of your future earnings. When you look at it this way, it makes some of the purchases we make on credit seem kind of silly. Fiscal health, for those but the most wealthy, demands that we be not just good wage earners, but good keepers of the purse. Superior investing returns come from prudent long-term management of our portfolios, but they also come from maximizing the amount of principal we accumulate.