How Does Your Debt Compare?
This MSN Money story offers some astonishing facts about how average Americans use credit.
Credit Cards
- The average cardholder has 2.7 bank credit cards, 3.8 retail credit cards, and 1.1 debit cards. That’s 7.6 cards per cardholder.
- The average household has more than $8,000 in credit card debt, up from about $3,000 in 1990. An $8,000 debt at a rate of 18% interest will take more than 25 years to repay and cost more than $24,000.
- The average interest rate charged by credit cards is 14.71%.
The total unused credit lines for bank credit cards was about $6,185 per person as of mid-year 2002.
- About 40% of active accounts are paid off monthly. About 3% of credit card accounts are past due by 30 days or more each month.
- The most recent Federal Reserve study showed that 43% of U.S. families spent more than they earned. On average, Americans spend $1.22 for each dollar they earn.
Mortgages
- Median years left on mortgage is 29, which means most people have refinanced recently.
- Median outstanding principal is $69,227, or 56.4% of home value
- 1,008,000 homeowners have 3 or more mortgages on the same property.
This article also discussed some other facts about student loans and bankruptcy rate. In summary, an average American is in a much worse debt situation than five or ten years ago. Shall we thank the historically low rate or hate it?
CardWeb reported that MyFICO.com now has a feature that will find you a list of mortgage rates that fit your particular credit score. Read
CardWeb presents a redemption value study of a number of credit card reward programs. The result: Read
This CardWeb article shows how profitable the credit card business is. Here is the credit card business profit of major issuers for the first three quarters in 2003: Read
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac posted their 2004 conforming loan limit as $333,700, or 3.4% higher than the 2003 limit of $322,700. Read
