Posted on 02/14/2025 9:47:52 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Collectively, Americans now owe a record $1.21 trillion on their credit cards, according to a new quarterly report on household debt from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Credit card balances jumped by $45 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024, driven in part by holiday spending, and are now 7.3% higher than a year ago.
At the same time, credit card delinquency rates “remained elevated,” the New York Fed researchers found — with 7.18% of balances transitioning to delinquency over the last year. That uptick could indicate “borrowers are having some difficulty repaying,” the researchers said on a press call Wednesday.
“No one should be surprised that credit card debt hit another record high,” said Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree and the author of “Ask Questions, Save Money, Make More.”
“Stubborn inflation has shrunk a lot of Americans’ financial margin for error from slim to about none, forcing people to lean more heavily on credit card debt,” Schulz said.
Credit card debt has remained stable over the last two decades. However, in the years since the pandemic, households largely spent down their excess savings, which sparked a rebound in credit card balances. Consumer spending continues to remain strong, despite high borrowing costs.
“There’s very little reason to believe that we won’t continue to see new credit card debt records being set going forward,” Schulz said.
Lower-income households that had to stretch to cover price increases, have been hit especially hard after the Federal Reserve’s string of interest rate hikes lifted the average credit card rate to more than 20% — near an all-time high.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Doesn’t maxed out credit cards cause “inflation”?
I heard Biden and his family are heavily invested in the credit card industry reason for the high inflation in the past 4 years
We’re doing our part. 🤔😵
Anyone gullible or stupid enough to believe Biden and his media flunkies last year about how great the economy was would be completely surprised.
lol
About 25 years ago, the amount of total corporate profits in the financial world was about 8% of the total, it is over 20% now.
The ripoffs:
Card rates are ludicrous . . . I took one of those Best Buy cards that I would pay off in 12 months for a computer purchase. If I didn’t pay it off, it would be 31.2%. I have no problem, but there are people who did. 31% when your cost of capital is low single digits is GREED, pure and simple.
63% can’t afford a $400 emergency expense. That is dangerous to the country.
The biggest theft of all time by the financial world is happening AS WE SPEAK . . . the lunacy of ‘Pay for Order Flow’, which allows Wall Street to front run ANY trade they want and scalp from the retail investor.
Dark exchanges without real time reporting requirements are a DISGRACE that the vaunted CFPB should have banned long ago.
Goldman made FOUR TIMES the amount of profits in the last quarter from trading than investment banking. Investment banking is far more important to the health of the economy than raping the retail investor, which the CFPB continues to allow. If they won’t clean that up, why not eliminate it?
Mortgage rates are too high if Fannie and Freddie are still in the picture.
We have turned our business schools into a Wall Street training ground instead of manufacturing geniuses.
It would seem that people are learning from the gummit, run up the tab as much as they want because there is no intention of paying it back.
Zero balance every month on our CC - best thing the wife and I ever did.
Hunter Biden was hired by MBNA back when Joe was a senator involved in banking regulation. This may be the earliest large corruption that these two pulled off.
"Collectively, Americans now owe...."No mention of the national debt, states' debts, corporate debt, county and municipal debt, tuition debt and more.
Here's a handy notion. Don't buy anything on credit. Have as little debt as possible, and live within your means.
As to that credit card debt, "collectively" we owe none of it.
People are just following the federal govts lead…. Take out new debt to pay off old debt.
not us pay them off monthly
So the fed can mine all our data but the president can NOT?!?!
3% of the increase is inflation.
We use an Alaska Airlines CC for my kids school tuition every month for the miles. We pay it off every month.
It is sad what power mad people have done to this nation.
Trump floated a 10% cap on rates when running.. I wonder if that will ever happen.
we can argue about how people ran them up, but the point remains at 30+% many people will never be able to get ahead on their cards.
Just biding their time...
No one should be surprised that many Americans live beyond their means. It’s been that way for a long time.
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