Everyday people hear about how all Americans owe thousands of dollars in credit card debt. These rumors are distributed through the media, government, bank officials, and many other people. They all say the same thing. That a trend is growing of Americans increasing in credit card debt. However if you break down the statistics that everyone talks about you can see the truth about credit card debt.
The most over used and over rated statistic states that each American has more than $8,000 in credit card debt. The statistic is only true if you’re taking the average credit card debt among the people that have credit cards. However this is usually a big misconception as the word average is often easily confused. Many people believe that they arrived at this number by dividing the credit card debt among everyone. However this couldn’t be further from the truth. They only used the number of Americans that have credit cards which leaves out a huge number of Americans in the averaging factor.
The truth is that 1 in 20 American households actually have more than $8,000 in credit card debt. This is because many families don’t even have credit cards. Another huge chunk of American families pay off their credit cards as soon as they get the bill and thus don’t even owe anything to the credit card companies even though they have credit cards. Out of the remaining families only a very few owe $2,000 or more in credit card debt. Thus you can see that the “average American household” number is deceiving.
The reason that the truth about credit card debt is hidden is because of how they got the $8,000 number. They got it by taking $750 billion, which is all the outstanding credit card debt, and divided it by 84 million, which is the number of American households that have credit cards. While this may seem reasonable at first glance it’s just a myth when you’re talking about the average American household.
The truth about credit card debt is that most Americans aren’t even counted in the calculation. There are many American households that have no credit cards. In fact 23.8%, almost a quarter of American households, have no credit cards. That’s a quarter of American households that weren’t even factored into the calculation. Another huge portion of households pay off their credit cards in full. How many households? 31.2%! The truth about credit card debt is that 55% of Americans have none. We can further break down the remaining 45% of households.
Out of the 45% 29% have $1,000 or more in credit card debt, 21% of households owe $2000 or more, 4% owe $10,000 or more, and 1% owe $21,000 or more. These numbers show that 26% of the American people carry all of the debt that is owed for debt that is $2,000 or more. American households owe very little to credit card companies. Most of the households that due have credit card debt have less than $1,000. The truth is that most of the American people are not in credit card debt and nowhere near the rumored numbers.
Layla Vanderbilt is the content coordinator for a leading website that offers for bad debt consolidation advice and guidance.
