Paid off $83 billion in 2020 and only racked up $17 billion in 2021?
Still winning... no great secret more money gets spent around the holiday season which was admittedly elongated with what retailers did to address the supply chain issues. My spending was insane for me this year, apparently I had $20000 in negative cash flow (more money spent than what came in) which I've never had in any year I was actually employed, but a lot of that was because of making somewhat large changes in my life... moved again, sold the LA condo which is weird accounting but some expense there, and an annoying large tuition bill but get busy living or get busy dying on that front. I did have *stupid* spending though which in this New Year I will be fixing, won't have as much time to be bored.
I strongly suspect from what I've heard in various media shows that a lot of other people were doing the same thing as me... 2020 was spent pretty much hunkering down, 2021 and this last quarter especially most people are just exasperated and are making non-trivial changes which ultimately are going to get financed somehow and that usually means credit card debt for most consumers.
I guess I just don't see it as that scary of a statistic as there's some fairly obvious macro- and socio-economic rationale for it.
It's $17b in Q3 2021 alone, estimated $70b for 2021 total, per the article summary.
Honestly, I'm surprised it wasn't more, what with the great resignation and all. My debt has gone up while we adjust budget after I spontaneously quit and went to a job paying less.
