In February of this year the US government and census data determined that that the average adult in America has $3,752 in revolving credit card debt. This is actually a decline from July of 2009, when the average credit card debt per person was estimated at $4,013. The total credit card debt of the average entire household in the United States is $7,394 down from $7,861. Obviously the US consumers have actually wised up to their personal credit card debt spending ways.
There seemed to be various other intriguing facts released by the Federal reserve board as well. One of the surveys taken suggested that 75% of all Americans have one or more credit cards. This is actually suprising since it suggested that 25% of household do not have any credit cards of any kind at all.
This data is actually very encouraging for my overall perception of the spending habit of Americans. What this data suggests is that there’s a nice percentage of the population that is certainly fully aware of how costly having credit cards can be. I would be curious to find out how this 25% that does not have any credit cards at all breaks down demographic wise. I actually hope that the 25% does not just account for people who are under the age of 18 and simply cannot obtain a credit card yet.
I would like to consider though that the recent economic depression is in fact teaching important lessons to people who spent in great amounts during the economic boom but they are now low on cash and so are finding methods on how to eliminate credit card debt. The raging economy prior to the start of the recession was simply too easy to get cash with. I had many friends who were mortgage brokers who could get someone approved for a loan that was a “no doc” loan. What this signifies in simple English is that one didn’t need any type of documentation to obtain the loan. One of my closest friend told me that he was able to approved a guy with his driver license ID.
People spend a lot of money every day, but now there’s no more money to spend and jobs are much tighter then they have ever been. Companies are cutting back which has led to less people having jobs or even if they have jobs they most likely are not getting the hours that they once had. In fact, those people who were already loaded with credit card debt prior to recession were seen looking for credit card debt settlement such as Indiana debt relief or Virginia debt relief.
The final outcome that I draw from the evident lowering in the total amount of revolving debt is this. There was clearly an increase in credit debt at the time the economy took a quick turn south. This was mainly because people didn’t have jobs and had to use them. The improvement could be based on the economy slowly improving in conjunction with the reduction of consumer spending on their personal credit cards.
