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Excluding mortgages, average American credit card debt and personal debt is up to $38,000 — a $1,000 jump from last year.
About a third of Americans accumulated between $5,000 and $25,000 in debt over the last year. Only half that amount added to their personal savings. And credit card debt could be a “key culprit” to the surge, says new data from investment company Northwestern Mutual. It now accounts for a fourth of a person’s debt, jumping six percentage points since last year and tying with mortgage debt.
Can we pay down our American credit card debt?
Most of us want to. More than half of Americans (53 percent) said their top financial priority in 2018 was to reduce debt.
Yet we’re spending slightly more on non-essentials each month than we are on debt repayment. How much more? One percentage point, but still. Northwestern Mutual found that after we cover basic necessities like food, most of our income falls into two buckets, like this:
- Discretionary expenses (from entertainment to travel): 37 percent
- Paying off debt (from credit cards to student loans, but excluding mortgage): 36 percent
And — no surprise here — a breakdown of our so-called discretionary spending shows the top bloodsucker there is often expensive dining and nightlife:
- Dining and nightlife: 15 percent
- Personal…
