We all know that countries across the world are currently struggling with a lot of debt at the moment. We’re in a time of financial crisis and it’s no surprise that this has also affected the individual and that we are all in a lot of debt personally too. Here we will look at the US personal debt statistics as according to the 2010 census statistics. It is a worrying insight into just how much debt the average American is in, but also perhaps shadenfreude for some who might feel relieved to know that US personal debt statistics suggest that they’re not that much worse off than their neighbours…
The first of our US personal debt statistics related to what’s called ‘consumer debt’. This means consumer credit that does not include real estate. Rather this covers all of the rest of our US personal debt statistics coming from student loans, automobile loans, credit and more. This consumer debt comes to a total of 2.4 trillion dollars across Americans, and according to the census that means roughly $7,800 for every single individual. Of course we have to remember with US personal debt statistics that these are averages effected by outliers and demographics so mostly this money is going to be owed by adults – putting it at just slightly higher. When you consider that these US personal debt statistics are not taking into account mortgages you then realise that in fact this figure could be a lot higher.
Breaking this down further we can then look at how these US personal debt statistics are accounted for by various forms of debts. Here we shall look at which areas are responsible for the most debt.
33% of debt is accounted for by ‘revolving credit’. This is credit that becomes repeatedly available and is repayable periodically – the most common example of course being a credit card. The remaining 67% meanwhile comes from loans that are not revolving which includes of course most loans such as car loans, student loans and most other forms of bank loans. Interestingly among these US personal debt statistics, the average car loan is $27,600.
Other interesting US personal debt statistics are that the ration of debt payments to disposable income are on average 11.9% and that this means that a fairly large 12% of all our profits go towards paying back tax – which includes both consumer debt and mortgage obligations. If you expand these US personal debt statistics to include other financial obligations such as insurance, rent and car lease payments then you find that this makes up over 16.78% of our disposable income. The good news for home owners though is that they spend 8% less in total on financial obligations so once you get on the property ladder there is at least some reprieve.
The us personal debt statistics show how ugly is the situation. Just think about it: the debt is $7,800 per person. This is how much he should provide for the country. Which means he MUST produce something that’s worth $7,800 and forget about getting paid at all. But obviously, the situation can’t be handled like that.
Crazy to think that. But really no wonder Americans are so far into debt. We learned it from our own country. We are so far in debt as a country that many do not really see huge debts as a problem. A problem that needs to be taken care of.
I agree with Angie on this one. We as a country are so used to being in debt. That is seems natural for us to do so. Maybe if our country was not in so much debt, it would be better for the citizens as well.
Holy cow. I could not imagine having that much out for a car loan. It is just crazy. We have had a car loan out before but it was only for about $18,000. That was enough for us.