Credit Card Debt Take II
Some issues seem to only get worse. Some updated statistics about credit cards and debt in American since the last time I posted about this:
- Americans spent one in seven of their take-home dollars on debt payments last year, up from one in nine in 1980.
- In 2006, the industry mailed out nearly 8 billion credit card offers, up from 3.5 billion in 2000.
- Credit card debt, less than $8 billion in 1968 (in current dollars), now exceeds $880 billion, more than tripling since 1988, adjusting for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve Bank.
- In part because of the debt burden, the consumer savings rate fell below zero percent in 2005 and has stayed there.