topic Re: Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report in Credit in the News

Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report

Yawgoog — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 20:07:33 GMT

Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/americans-household-debt-hits-new-record-high-report/story?id=127221208&cid=social_twitter_abcn

"Americans’ household debt levels – including mortgages, car loans, credit cards and student loans – are now at a new record high, according to data released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York."

"Total household debt reached $18.59 trillion from July through September of this year, up by $197 billion from the previous quarter. Overall debt levels are up by $4.4 trillion since the end of 2019, just before the pandemic recession."

"The report also shows Americans’ outstanding credit card balances increased by $24 billion to $1.23 trillion in the third quarter of this year – an all-time high. Credit card debt is up nearly 6% compared to one year ago."

Re: Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report

USMCOne — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:45:31 GMT

Sad state of affairs with all to blame. Americans we often suffer from excess consumption and conserism. Take iPhones. iPhone 17's are a smashing hit. Do you need it? How did you finance it? Starbucks. Anyone look into how much they rake in a fiscal quarter? Was your daily 10 dollar coffee required? How did you pay for it?. List goes on and on.

Re: Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report

Thomas_Thumb — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 15:24:10 GMT

It is important to normalize data when presenting this type of information. Total debt will naturally increase as population grows and inflation erodes dollar value.

That being said, average housing size has trended up, way up. This trend, coupled with less available land, translates to less affordable housing. The average vehicle size has gone way up as well. The need for more has devoured any notion of less is better. Increased debt is an outcome of conspicuous consumption.

Continued population growth is a significant contributing factor. As competition for limited resources intensifies costs escalate. Try reducing demand. Even a small population decline can produce a glut of homes and reverse pricing trends. Consider Detroit as a case study.

Re: Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report

Realist — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 19:13:29 GMT

This is to be expected of course, and then will come calamity one day until one learns to do better. When times are good, you dig your well, in preparation of bad times. When times go bad, you are buffered through those preparations, or are weathered to do things others may not be able to do. Many people simply do not prepare, and wing it from cycle to cycle, allowing themselves to be tossed to the wind, where it may take them.

In every cycle, there are unfortunately a lot of rinse and repeat.

Re: Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report

Jessie — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 23:19:23 GMT

From what I understand, it's not a record when you adjust for inflation. Silver lining I guess.

Re: Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report

AndrewF — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 22:57:01 GMT

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:
It is important to normalize data when presenting this type of information. Total debt will naturally increase as population grows and inflation erodes dollar value.

That being said, average housing size has trended up, way up. This trend, coupled with less available land, translates to less affordable housing. The average vehicle size has gone way up as well. The need for more has devoured any notion of less is better. Increased debt is an outcome of conspicuous consumption.

Continued population growth is a significant contributing factor. As competition for limited resources intensifies costs escalate. Try reducing demand. Even a small population decline can produce a glut of homes and reverse pricing trends. Consider Detroit as a case study.

The population isn't going to grow with no net immigration, but you're right about the dollar buying much less every year lately.

Everyone who buys things knows it's not 3%, it's more like at least 12%. The rent goes up 11% a year, the food goes up 7-8%, the car insurance and electric are up by more than 20% some years lately.

Nobody really knows what it is, but one thing is for sure is that it's not 3%.

So it's no surprise that with everything up except wages, credit card debt will rise, household debts of all sorts will rise, as long as the banks will give out more loans. And when they stop, you get a horrible recession and a bankruptcy wave a bit after.

The effective interest rate on my spouse's AmEx Gold Card if you use Plan It is 27.49% APR. Interestingly, when I paid my Progressive Insurance policy in full for the pay in full discount and the extra $20 rebate from AmEx (have to do it through PayPal but AmEx recognizes it as insurance), I acted like I was going to make a Plan It plan. It ended up being the same total cost if you did that as doing 6 installments through Progressive.

In other words, after having the GALL to raise my car insurance by 57% for "reasons" over the past 5 years even though my FICO score is better now and my car has depreciated, Progressive will effectively LOAN you the car insurance at 27% interest and then also add a $6 a month fee for being invoiced. If you're too broke to pay that all at once.

I think that car insurance for many people should be factored in as high interest household debt.

I told an agent "I haven't crashed into anyone, I haven't been pulled over by the cops, my credit score keeps going up, my car is worth less money every 6 months, and I haven't really don't anything wrong, but every time Progressive comes back at me they want another 5-10% vs. 6 months ago and this is absolutely nuts."

Re: Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report

Thomas_Thumb — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 04:18:30 GMT

FYI - car insurers do not pull updates for credit based insurance scores on policy renewals. You must fill out a form requesting they pull an update. If your credit has improved over the years, request an update.

Also, you may want to shop around for alternate insurance. IMO insurers take advantage of existing policy holders by excessively jacking up premiums.

Over time you pay more than if you were a new policy shopper. So much for loyal customer discounts. More like loyal customer bag holders.

Re: Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report

JamesS84 — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 22:33:47 GMT

From my understanding, this has happened a bunch of times in the past couple of years. We’ve been setting record after record, if you’re not factoring in inflation.

Re: Americans' household debt hits new record high, according to Fed report

AndrewF — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 04:02:07 GMT

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:
FYI - car insurers do not pull updates for credit based insurance scores on policy renewals. You must fill out a form requesting they pull an update. If your credit has improved over the years, request an update.

Also, you may want to shop around for alternate insurance. IMO insurers take advantage of existing policy holders by excessively jacking up premiums.

Over time you pay more than if you were a new policy shopper. So much for loyal customer discounts. More like loyal customer bag holders.

Per Progressive: They pull a credit report about 20-25 days before your policy is set to renew, every time. It's automatic.

The person on the phone told me that yesterday.

Also, yes, When I left GEICO for Progressive, Progressive was charging me like $500 for my first term and GEICO was up to $800 and something, that was about two years ago. Now Progressive wants $712.50 this term and GEICO said $435.10.

Guess who is switching back. They do this on purpose. They give you the first one cheap, and then after a few renewals, not so cheap anymore.

It was only a year ago that GEICO was bragging about raising premiums (overall) in Illinois by 26% in a single year. They said that previously they didn't know how to price risk here and were losing money. So how come I was paying over $800 and all of a sudden they want to give me $435?