American Debt Statisticscredit, credit counseling, credit debt

The American debt statistics for credit card debt is pretty steep. It’s one of the top reasons why millions of Americans are in debt today. If you look into the amount of money that is owed in the credit card industry, you can’t help but notice why they’re getting stricter about who they give credit to. For instance, with Chase there is $183.32 billion worth of debt and with Bank of America there is approximately $166.32 billion of credit card debt. In third place, there’s Citi, which has $106.74 billion in credit card debt. The list goes on and at the bottom is First National with $4.93 billion of debt – still pretty high.

How Knowing Debt Statistics can Help You
You may not understand how knowing debt statistics can help your financial status, but it definitely can. Whether you’re already in debt or just starting out with obtaining credit, doing proper research in debt stats will help you to understand the risks. For instance, when you know the credit card debt statistics you’ll have a better understanding of the industry. With Chase bank, you see that they have the highest amount of credit card debt – this could be because they offered high credit lines to folks who couldn’t afford it or many people weren’t able to keep up with their monthly bills. Either way, there is a problem. Some credit card companies are known to raise their interest rates, which is another cause for individuals being incapable of affording their payments.

Where Consumer Debt Stats are the Highest
Roughly 37% of the debt in America comes from credit cards. The other 63% of debt comes from home mortgages, car loans, school loans and personal loans. In 2005, there were approximately 164 million credit card holders and this number is expected to increase by 12 million in 2010. It is also estimated that 1.4 billion credit cards are owned by this number, which averages to about 9 credit cards per person. These credit cards include those issued by department stores, gas companies and banks.