Credit Card Debt Tops $3,500 Per Adult, $7,200 Per Household

[bkfiler]

Credit Card Debt Tops $3,500 Per Adult, $7,200 Per Household

January 11, 2006

Using government debt data and census data, IndexCreditCards.com has determined that the average American adult is carrying $3,560 in revolving debt and the average American household is carrying $7,271 in revolving debt. Revolving debt is mainly debt from credit cards, although certain other open-end lines of credit may be included as well.

Data released earlier this week from the Federal Reserve Board estimates that revolving consumer debt in the United States totals $799.1 billion. Using census data from 2004 and 2005, www.IndexCreditCards.com estimates the adult (18 and over) population of the U.S. at 224,444,930 and the total number of households at 109,902,090. Dividing the total revolving debt by the population/household figures gives the resulting debt averages.

"Those are scary numbers," says Justin McHenry, Research Director for IndexCreditCards.com, "especially when you consider that the credit scoring company Fair Issac says that 40 percent of credit card holders carry a balance below $1,000. That means there are many, many people with debt far above these averages, people whose credit card debt has gotten out of control."

Source: IndexCreditCards.com Press Release

[bkfiler]

thats all they got? lord have mercy i went way over board i see lol

[JimH]

That amount seems like pocket change to me. 10x for me. When I do something, I do it right.

[GoingDown]

It's amazing how easy it is to rack up a huge credit card debt. I had credit cards with $1500 limits and once I reached the limit, they kept on raising my credit limit higher and higher because I was paying the minimum payment each time. In retrospect, that should have been a red flag to them to stop raising my limit because I couldn't even pay that off each month. And I should have thought about it more carefully, too, I guess. When I look back at some of the things I bought, I wonder what I was thinking at the time. It was just so easy to whip out the plastic. But now that I pay most things with cash, I'm a lot more careful.