Credit Card Debt Statistics

According to credit card debt statistics, the average American is close to drowning in a sea of debt. Credit card debt statistics show that the trend of acquiring debt has been steadily rising ever since the eighties. Since then, credit card usage among all segments of the population has become the normal mode of transacting purchases and sales.

The main factor influencing this massive shift in credit card usage has been the credit card companies themselves. Every year, they mail over five billion solicitations to Americans across the country offering them seductive initial credit terms. As we can see from the following credit card statistics, the credit card companies have target teenagers and students in a big way.

Over one third of all teenagers in the U.S. carry credit cards. If they are students, over one fourth of them  carry a credit card balance of over $1,000.

If the student is a college undergraduate student, odds are that he or she has three credit cards with an average dollar amount of over $2,000. The more education a student carries, the greater his credit card debt load seems to be. Once a student reaches the graduate level, credit card debt statistics show that he has a debt of over $4,000. Of the students that have credit card debt, at least a quarter of them will roll over the balance at the end of the month.

Among families in general, the average U.S. household is carrying over $9,000 in credit card debt. What are they using their credit cards for? They're charging food, medical bills, household bills, and utilities - items that few people used their credit cards for as recently as 15 years ago.

Overall the credit card companies have issued at least one card to over 140 million credit cards to people in the U.S. There are more than 800 million bank credit cards in circulation. If you add in the credit cards issued by retail stores, gas companies, and other financial institutions - the number of credit cards in circulation balloons to over a billion.

The total credit card debt held by Americans is over $240 billion. There are no hard statistics on how many credit card holders pay only the minimum each month, but estimates put the number at somewhere between 25 and 50 million people. At any rate, the combination of all these statistics show that the average family spends a much greater proportion of his disposable income than ever before on paying for the serviceable debt on credit card bills.

Statistics show that credit card debt has a hand in bankruptcies also. Every day, of the bankruptcies that are filed, over 300 of the filings show that the person had credit card debt of between $50,000 and $75,000.

That all these statistics reveal in start terms is that credit card debt is firmly at the root of many financial problems that Americans are facing today.

College Credit Cards - Learning To Handle Them
Many banks and credit card issuers offer college credit cards designed specifically for college students. Here's how not to get taken.

3 Debt Management Tips To Keep You Out Of Trouble
Debt management is all about you learning to control the amount of debt that you are responsible for at any one point in time. Use these 3 debt management tips to keep you out of trouble.