Averages really obfuscate the story here. A ~$6300 average could mean 6 people carrying $6300 balances or five carrying no balance and one dude carrying $30k+. I’d love to see the distribution here because leaning on credit for necessities is what people do when they’re falling out of the middle class.
Average consumer now carries $6,329 in credit card debt. 'People are stretched,' expert says.
Submitted 3 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
Comments
seaQueue@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 months ago
Ironically a similar thing is marriage. The statistic which is like “1/3 marriages end in divorce” are because of the same person marrying like 3 or 4 times. It’s quite a bit lower if you only factor in the first marriage
cannibalkitteh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
Credit card debt Georg has over 10 million dollars in credit card debt and is an outlier and should not have been counted.
Boozilla@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Agree. Weighted arithmetic mean would help. And/or breaking it up by net worth or income.
curiousaur@reddthat.com 3 months ago
There are some other legitimate reasons to put tons in credit too. I built an ADU on my property. Asked the bank for a loan to build it, a second mortgage. They said no, there’s not enough equity. (I’d just bought the house a year prior). I explained that the value of the property will go up by more than the amount of the loan I’m asking. Of course they told me they can’t give loans based on hypothetical future appraisals. So they advised me to put it all on credit. I had a line of 30k with them after all and that’s the exact amount I’d asked for.
So we did. Maxed out the card to build the ADU, got the property reappraised, then got the second mortgage, then used that to pay off the credit card debt, now renting out the ADU for $200 more per month than the loan payment. It all worked out and made perfect sense, but I carried 30k of cc debt for like 4 months while this all went down.
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
It took 40-some years but I’m finally above average in something 😎
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I thought I was starting to do better on my debts, got a notice from the IRS yesterday saying I missed a 1099c in my 2022 taxes that dictated I owe them 1,600 dollars. Not sure how that could be true, I remember I had paid a few hundred that year, so I’m not sure what went wrong. Not looking forward to figuring it out.
Madison420@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Just an fyi resend and that number usually goes away. They did the same thing to me for the same year and when questioned they said they just never got the paperwork. Resent and everything was fine.
viking@infosec.pub 3 months ago
In the US.
That’s quite an important fact.
henfredemars@infosec.pub 3 months ago
What’s the median? Average could just be my neighbor Steve.
shamrockpreacher5@reddthat.com 3 months ago
Is everyone just hoping hyperinflation takes off?
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You assume that people have a choice. Wages are so low compared to the cost of living in most of this country that unless you’re making six figures, you aren’t going to have much extra without sacrificing what used to just be normal a couple decades ago.
Johnny Harris recently released a video going through several income levels, starting at a $25k job up to $25 million and how that would breakdown for monthly costs with department of labor data for food and housing.
Jubei_K_08@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The linked video is in Spanish for me. Just fyi, not sure if you meant to link the English version.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 3 months ago
Y’all should consider doing crime.
veganpizza69@lemmy.world 3 months ago
In the spirit of Robin Hood.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 months ago
How about a little Tyler Durden? Just a little.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
You mean get a job with these credit card companies?
BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world 3 months ago
They said do crime, not do evil.
Crisps@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This is surprisingly low. If the average family put all their expenses on a card and pays it if every month it won’t be far off this.
What is the average amount is that people are actually paying interest on?
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Stories like this are why I have no hope for the future, at least here in the US.
My eighty year-old grandparents are driving for DoorDash (in my car) and that’s all the income they have to live on. If they hadn’t paid off their mortgage years ago they’d be homeless.
return2ozma@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The empire is collapsing.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Ever wonder what it was like to live in Rome during the collapse?
UniversalMonk@lemmy.world 3 months ago
And you think its way better in other places? Name a place that you think is better off that the US. The entire world is addicted to credit and debt.
Not me tho! My houses paid off, cars are paid off, and I have no debt. So fuck that noize.
BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
On this particular topic (credit card debt) it is way better in other places.
The median credit card debt is by far the highest in the US compared to other countries. https://www.cardrates.com/advice/average-credit-card-debt-by-country/