You are Not Alone: Credit Card Debt Statistics.

Do you have any idea just how common credit card debt is? Let’s take a look at a few statistics from the USA.

The average family carries a balance of between $5,000 and $8,000 on all their credit cards, depending on which figures you believe. Over $1,000 per family goes on interest every year. And that’s just the average - some people owe much more! Overall, Americans spend over $1 trillion every year on their credit cards, and more than $500 billion of it is credit card debt.

Over 90% of Americans’ disposable incomes are spent paying back debts. Whatever happened to saving? If debt continues at the current rate, then one family in a hundred will be forced into bankruptcy over credit card debt.

Debt Costs Everyone Money.

Literally billions of dollars are being used up on expenses that are only created because of the existence of the credit card industry. The weight of the calculations, administration and marketing needed to support the industry is immense - the average American gets at least one credit card offer in the mail every day.

That’s before you take into account the burden bankruptcies put on the court system, and the cost to the government of providing subsidised debt counselling. You might also note that consumers with more debt have less to spend - and when money isn’t flowing, it hurts the economy. There are very few industries or people that aren’t hurt by debt, at least in the long run.

Debt is Much More Common Than It Used To Be.

It’s not so long ago that being in even a little debt was considered to be absolutely terrible. When you wanted something, you saved up for it, and bought it once you had enough money. If you had bad credit, you couldn’t get a credit card at all. Go back fifty years and consumer debt figures were absurdly low, the same way they are today in most of the non-Western world.

In the West, though, the art of saving seems to be a lost one - almost no-one is saving enough for their retirement, and banks are having to offer ever-higher interest rates to get people to put money anywhere near a savings account. We have an ‘I-want-it-now’ consumer culture, and we’re willing to pay more than we can afford to fund our lifestyles. This leads to credit card debt becoming an ever increasing problem.

• How to Pay Off Credit Card Debt (ABC 2 Baltimore)
  
  It's a new year and time to pay off your credit card debt. We've scoured the web to find tips for the entire week.
  


• Credit card companies willing to deal over debt (Greater Baton Rouge Business Report)
  
  (From The New York Times ) After helping to foster the explosive growth of consumer debt in recent years, credit card companies are realizing that some hard-pressed Americans will not be able to pay their bills as the economy deteriorates.
  


• The trivia of Credit Card Debt Settlement (PIZZAHEROS)
  
  Clearly, everything will come with a higher price for a period of time but you'll have to weigh that with a straight debt consolidation solution in which you pay off your debt.