What is the average debt in the US?
The average debt an American owes is $103,358 across mortgage loans, home equity lines of credit, auto loans, credit card debt, student loan debt, and other debts like personal loans. Data from Experian breaks down the average debt a consumer holds based on type, age, credit score, and state.
Debt-to-income ratio is your monthly debt obligations compared to your gross monthly income (before taxes), expressed as a percentage. A good debt-to-income ratio is less than or equal to 36%. Any debt-to-income ratio above 43% is considered to be too much debt.
Around 23% of Americans are debt free, according to the most recent data available from the Federal Reserve. That figure factors in every type of debt, from credit card balances and student loans to mortgages, car loans and more.
Here's the average debt balances by age group: Gen Z (ages 18 to 23): $9,593. Millennials (ages 24 to 39): $78,396. Gen X (ages 40 to 55): $135,841.
The average balance is $6,501 as of the third quarter of 2023, according to Experian. That's a 10% increase from 2022 and the first time average credit card debt has exceeded $6,000 since 2019.
What's considered too much debt is relative and varies by person based on the financial situation. There's no specific definition of “a lot of debt” — $10,000 might be a high amount of debt to one person, for example, but a very manageable debt for someone else.
Generation | Average credit card debt |
---|---|
Baby boomers (58–76) | $6,245 |
Generation X (42–57) | $8,134 |
Millennials (26–41) | $5,649 |
Generation Z (19–25) | $2,854 |
Indeed, men carry more overall debt than women, including across most debt categories. But women carry more student loan debt and often have more credit cards. 1 We go a little more in-depth into this in the next section.
$5,000 in credit card debt can be quite costly in the long run. That's especially the case if you only make minimum payments each month. However, you don't have to accept decades of credit card debt.
The average FICO credit score in the US is 718, according to the latest FICO data from April 2023. The average VantageScore is 701 as of December 2023. Credit scores, which are like a grade for your borrowing history, fall in the range of 300 to 850. The higher your score, the better.
How many Americans live paycheck to paycheck?
Statistics vary, but between 55 percent to 63 percent of Americans are likely living paycheck to paycheck.
Analysis of the debt share in the U.S. shows that people aged 40-49 hold the largest amount of debt at $4.21 trillion in total. People aged 50-59 have the most credit card debt in total at $0.21 trillion, and people aged 30-39 have the most student loan debt at $0.5 trillion.
![What is the average debt in the US? (2024)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RNQ2yfyzOi4/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEcCNAFEJQDSFXyq4qpAw4IARUAAIhCGAFwAcABBg==&rs=AOn4CLBjtc9tIuLAfeLgTwARbRKKqH5IOw)
“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O'Leary has said the ideal age to be debt-free is 45, especially if you want to retire by age 60. Being debt-free — including paying off your mortgage — by your mid-40s puts you on the early path toward success, O'Leary argued.
Running up $50,000 in credit card debt is not impossible. About two million Americans do it every year. Paying off that bill?
The general rule of thumb is that you shouldn't spend more than 10 percent of your take-home income on credit card debt.
The average American has $65,100 in savings — excluding retirement assets — according to Northwestern Mutual's 2023 Planning & Progress Study. That's a 5% increase over the $62,000 reported in 2022.
The 50-30-20 rule recommends putting 50% of your money toward needs, 30% toward wants, and 20% toward savings. The savings category also includes money you will need to realize your future goals. Let's take a closer look at each category.
The 28/36 rule dictates that you spend no more than 28 percent of your gross monthly income on housing costs and no more than 36 percent on all of your debt combined, including those housing costs.
Is $2,000 too much credit card debt? $2,000 in credit card debt is manageable if you can pay more than the minimum each month. If it's hard to keep up with the payments, then you'll need to make some financial changes, such as tightening up your spending or refinancing your debt.
Be aware that the 30 percent threshold applies both to your total debt and each account. You want to maintain less than a 30 percent balance on each card and overall.
How bad is credit card debt in America?
Americans now owe a collective $1.13 trillion on their credit cards, according to a new report on household debt from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Credit card balances increased by $50 billion, or roughly 5%, in the fourth quarter of 2023, the New York Fed found.
Age | Average FICO Score |
---|---|
25-40 | 686 |
41-56 | 705 |
57-75 | 740 |
76+ | 760 |
Approximately three-quarters of Black- and White-headed families have debt, but the median debt-to-asset ratio is 50% higher among Black than White families (Copeland, 2020), with Black borrowers less likely to fully repay loans (Brevoort et al., 2021).
According to a recent survey conducted online by The Harris Poll on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma among 2,098 U.S. adults ages 18+, more than half of Americans (53%) say their financial situation worsened in 2023, and this is especially true for those with annual household incomes of less than $50K (63%).
According to credit bureau Experian's data from the first quarter of 2020, women and men now share an average FICO credit score of 705. This is a 1-point increase for women from the second quarter of 2019 and about a 10-point increase for both groups since the second quarter of 2015.
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