CREDIT CARD CRUNCH
Credit cards now hold more than $800 billion of U.S. consumers’ $13.5 trillion in debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That isn’t as much as mortgage debt ($9 trillion) or auto loan debt ($1.3 trillion), but it also isn’t being paid off the same. Roughly 5 percent of credit card debt is past due, compared with just 2.3 percent of auto loans and 1.2 percent of mortgages. Only student loan debt has a worse track record at $1.4 trillion, 9.1 percent of which is past due. People make a lot of mistakes with their credit cards, and we consulted financial experts to find out just how many.
