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The rates of Americans behind on auto loan and credit card bills continue to rise — in fact, both are at the highest levels in more than 10 years. Rising delinquencies indicate that more people are in financial distress. When auto loan or credit card payments are missed, consumers dig themselves deeper into debt and see major drops in their credit scores, so it’s usually an outcome people try to absolutely avoid.

When she started shopping for the holidays late last year, Kelly Andersen was struggling to buy her loved ones gifts. So she turned to a novel solution to get through the season: Buy now, pay later. The 31-year-old freelance copywriter from Los Angeles used Klarna and PayPal to split a variety of purchases into four interest-free payments spread out over a series of weeks. At the time, her upfront cost was about a quarter of the overall purchase price. But now that January has arrived and the other installments are starting, Andersen isn’t sure how she’s going to pay them...

Americans are feeling the pinch of inflation. Wages are up but consumers are worse off. Average hourly earnings have risen by 5.5% over the last year. But factoring in rising costs, real earnings are down 2.6%. So, how are Americans making ends meet? They’re charging it. Consumer debt continues to climb at a staggering rate. Total consumer debt rose by $52.4 billion in March, a 14% increase according to the latest data released by the Federal Reserve. Outstanding consumer debt now stands at $4.54 trillion. The Federal Reserve consumer debt figures include credit card debt, student loans and auto loans,...

Do a quick scan of TikTok and you’ll find trendy young people casually blowing hundreds or thousands of dollars on clothes and jewelry, often set to the clattering, bass-boosted din of Florida rapper Saucy Santana’s fittingly titled “Material Girl.” Plenty of those influencers get the goods they flaunt for free. But if you don’t have the followers, or the up-front cash to blow, TikTokers have a tip: Just use “buy now, pay later” services, the hottest new way to take on debt. You may have seen some of these names — Klarna, Sezzle, Zip (formerly Quadpay), Afterpay and Affirm —...

New York (CNN Business)Americans got into a lot more debt in February as rampant inflation kept up the pressure, the Federal Reserve's consumer credit report showed Thursday. Debt levels jumped by nearly $42 billion to a total of almost $4.5 trillion. That's an annual increase of 11.3%, seasonally adjusted, far outperforming economists' expectations and setting a new high. In January, total credit had grown only 2.4%. The Fed's historical consumer credit data goes back to the early 1940s. Revolving credit, which includes credit cards, jumped by 20.7% to about $1.1 trillion. The category increased by only 4% in the prior...

Democrats want to use stimulus money to make you into the people populating Disney's cartoon 'Wall-E.' Instead, turn it into a weapon for antifragility.Democrats’ fifth round of “coronavirus” “stimulus” will soon hand another $1,400 in government debt, plus interest, to every American man, woman, and child in 90 percent of U.S. households. It’s clear this is yet another round of hush money meant to keep Americans quiet and distracted while Democrats restructure the United States into a larger version of their failed uniparty state, California.While COVID times have been obviously worse than the four years of prosperity and freedom under...

Shoppers delivered the strongest holiday sales increase for U.S. retailers in six years, according to early data. Total U.S. retail sales, excluding automobiles, rose 5.1% between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 from a year earlier, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending with all forms of payment. The figures suggest a stock-market swoon and partial government shutdown haven’t curbed consumer confidence and spending. “Wall Street is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, while Mr. and Mrs. Main Street are happy with their jobs, enjoying their best wage increases in a decade,” said...

Americans are starting to pile up more credit card debt than ever before. According to a new study released Monday, U.S. consumers added $33 billion in credit card debt during the second quarter of 2017, making it the second-highest point of debt since the end of 2008.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Everyone knows America has too much debt. What they don’t know is that things are getting better, not worse. Little by little, our economy is reducing its debt burden, slowly repairing the damage caused by 10, 20 or 30 years of excess. If you want to know why economic growth has been so tepid, here’s your answer. Four years after the storm hit, the economy is still deleveraging. And it’s very hard for any economy to grow when everyone is focused on increasing their savings.

Nobody likes unpleasant surprises, but when Allison Brooke Eastman’s fiancé found out four months ago just how high her student loan debt was, he had a particularly strong reaction: he broke off the engagement within three days. Ms. Eastman said she had told him early on in their relationship that she had over $100,000 of debt. But, she said, even she didn’t know what the true balance was; like a car buyer who focuses on only the monthly payment, she wrote 12 checks a year for about $1,100 each, the minimum possible. She didn’t focus on the bottom line, she...

Ghost of Joseph Schumpeter and the end of the Monthly Payment Consumer, again More than 25 years of successful credit bubble re-inflations have trained us to think of consumer retrenchment as temporary. This time it is not. Invest accordingly. The monthly payment consumer (MPC) first appeared in the late 1920s with the advent of installment credit that temporarily extended the purchasing power of the American middle class enough to make exciting consumer products affordable, products that entrepreneurs unleashed in a wave as they beat government financed WWI military technology swords into consumer products plowshares--radios, refrigerators, and automobiles. By 1929, personal...

Tremors felt in the U.S. Treasury market after China's Premier Wen Jiabao's expressed insecurity about China's U.S. assets persisted throughout the trading day as U.S. government securities' appeal as a safe haven bid was tainted by supply concerns. "We have lent a massive amount of capital to the United States, and of course we are concerned about the security of our assets. To speak truthfully, I do indeed have some worries," Wen said during a Friday news conference in Beijing. Although investors largely put aside preoccupations about mounting government issuance this week following several fairly successful note and bond auctions,...

Consumers often purchase a new vehicle while still owing thousands of dollars on their old one, which they use as a trade-in NEW YORK -- A growing number of new car buyers are finding they owe more on their existing car loans than the vehicles are worth as trade-ins. The phenomenon, known as being "upside down" on a loan, is the result of a confluence of changes in the ways Americans buy and finance their vehicles. To begin with, the prices of new cars and trucks have been held down as manufacturers offer incentives and rebates to lure purchasers. As...

If you pay your bills on time and generally pay off your credit card balance each month, credit card companies aren't really interested in you. The money is made by charging an interest rate that can capriciously hop up and down, slamming you with outrageous late fees and making sure you never want to pay more than the minimum payment. "I don't know any merchant in America who can change the price after you've bought the item, except the credit card industry," says Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren in the film. "These guys have figured out the best way  ...

St Petersburg, Florida - Slowly crawling out from the cozy darkness beneath my desk where I have been cowering all morning, I peer tentatively at Total Fed Credit, which I do because that is where the proverbial "money out of thin air" initially comes from. I note with alarm bells clanging so loudly that my own screaming in fear is partially drowned out, that this particular cancer ballooned by a hefty $6.6 billion last week. The reason for this continual creation of new money is perhaps best explained by Sean Corrigan himself, when he says "US commercial banks, foreign monetary...

UPDATE - US consumer credit up $4.1 bln in November-Fed Thursday January 8, 3:34 pm ET (Adds details, quotes) WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - U.S. consumers took on debt in November, but at less than half the pace seen in October, a Federal Reserve report released on Thursday showed. The Fed said consumer debt outstanding rose by $4.1 billion in November, after a sharply revised rise of $8.3 billion in October. The November data was close to Wall Street expectations for a $5.0 billion advance. October's gain had initially been reported as a rise of only about $940.7 million. In...

UPDATE - US consumer credit rose $940.7 mln in Oct -Fed Friday December 5, 3:23 pm ET (Adds detail, background) WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - U.S. consumers took on new debt at a slower pace than expected in October, a Federal Reserve report showed on Friday. The Fed said consumer credit outstanding edged up $940.7 million to $1.977 trillion in October from an upwardly revised total of $1.976 trillion in September. In September, outstanding credit increased an upwardly revised $17.0 billion, the Fed said. Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting a $5 billion October increase. Revolving debt, which tracks credit...

US holiday spending to disappoint-consumer group Reuters, 11.25.03, 12:35 PM ET By Andrea Hopkins WASHINGTON, Nov 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. holiday shopping season may not live up to economists' robust expectations, a survey out on Tuesday suggested, with more Americans saying they would cut spending from last year's already weak levels. A surprisingly pessimistic survey from the Consumer Federation of America and the Credit Union National Association said consumers are cautious because of lingering concern about the economy and worries about household debt. Most private-sector economists have predicted strong U.S. holiday spending, fuelled by leftover cash from summer tax...

US consumer credit shot up $15.1 bln in Sept - Fed Friday November 7, 3:01 pm ET WASHINGTON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - U.S. consumers piled on debt in September, taking on loans for cars and other items at a rapid pace, the Federal Reserve said on Friday. The Fed said consumer credit outstanding rose a larger-than-expected $15.1 billion to $1.972 trillion in September, its biggest gain since January. It marked an acceleration from August's revised $8.8 billion gain and was well ahead of Wall Street expectations of a $5.9 billion increase.

October 31, 2003 Consumption - Recovery Leader or Potential Profit-Killer? by Kurt Richebächer Abstract:"...The underlying basic fact is that Americans, in the aggregate, have been spending and continue to spend in excess of their current income. What is wrong with that? Why should excess consumption strangle economic growth? The short answer is, consumer spending in excess of income inherently means also in excess of production, and this part of consumer spending essentially emigrates to foreign producers, adding nothing to the U.S. GDP..."Americas economic recovery and its likely strength have been and remain the central preoccupation in economics around the...