Did you know that U.S. households are carrying $1.18 trillion in credit card debt? Considering the fact that the average rate of interest on credit card balances is now over 20 percent, that is not good news at all. Sadly, most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month in this very harsh economic environment, and turning to credit cards for some relief can be extremely tempting.
A thousand dollar credit card balance can turn into four or five thousand dollars in the blink of an eye, and once you get that deep into the hole it can be very difficult to ever dig yourself out. Of course if you end up losing your job or having a major medical emergency, that can be enough to push you completely over the edge financially. Today, that is happening to an alarming number of Americans.
For some perspective, let’s go back to the end of 2024. At that time, it was being reported that “credit card loan defaults soared this year.”
During the first nine months of 2024, lenders wrote off more than $46 billion in seriously delinquent credit card loans, according to a report from the Financial Times citing data analyzed by BankRegData. That’s an increase of 50% from the first three quarters of 2023, and the highest since 2010.
Unfortunately, this crisis has continued ...
