Paying Bills

Is paying bills an art long past?  I deal regularly with many people who only get paid once a month. They have a charge account at my store and almost all of them pay it regularly.  Even the ones you wouldn't expect.  This occurrence happened in such close conjunction to each other that it really struck me and made me take notice.  You see, my wife has never paid bills on time or well at all.  I'm not sure if this is a generational thing, or a learned thing or what.  We struggled for years because I was too preoccupied by my education to pay bills and had to trust her to take care of things.  She assured me she was.  Then I would wake up and try to get ready for school and the water would be shut off.  That was pretty frustrating, but I digress.  Last night a bill collector called our house.  I didn't know who it was when they asked for her and simply turned the phone over.  She took it to the other room, apparently because she didn't want me to know.  Her discussion got pretty heated though and I couldn't help but hear her insisting she would pay and trying to find out the minimum she could pay and get by.  It struck a chord with me because I haven't heard those arguments in a long time since I took over finances.  It's no worry of mine because our finances are totally separate.  I'm not in fear someone will repo a car or the house.  It's simply a mark against her credit...again.  So the interesting thing is today at work I had two patients come in to pay bills and I thought how sad that these guys are better at paying bills than my wife, or a large part of the country for that matter.  The one is an alcoholic that lives with his mother at age 52 and has multiple psychological problems.  No one tells him to come pay his bill, he doesn't get his meds regularly and he's frankly pretty out there.  But as little base level intelligence as he has, he knows to pay his damned bill.  The other gentleman is drunk-tarded.  He has drank himself until he's not mentally competent, he is homeless and sleeps anywhere he can find a place to lay out of the rain.  He lost his tongue to cancer and is an alcoholic.  Despite it all, he knows to pay his damned bill.  How is it that these guys who have it so hard (whether they made it hard on themselves or not is not the point, point being they got it ROUGH) know to pay their bill and make sure their bills are paid before their cigarettes and booze are bought.  Is this something that was taught in a generation past or is it something that's more of an individual instance from person to person?