The American people have heard that everyone is in a lot of debt. This is because there are a lot of rumors about credit card debt that people hear every day. There are many sources such as the media, the government, and even bank officials that claim each American is thousands of dollars in debt when it comes to credit cards. People start to believe these rumors because of all of the statistics that officials show. Because of the media and statistics the real truth about credit card debt is hidden and can only be seen if the statistics are broken down further.
There’s a statistic that claims the average American carries more than $8,000 in credit card debt. This statistic is widely believed because of its publicity. But the fact is that the statistic itself is skewed in the way it was found. The average American is conceived of as having kids and living in a multiple bedroom house with a basement. We can see that the word average can easily confuse a person about what it really means.
The truth is that 1 in 20 American households really have more than $8,000 in credit card debt. This is because many families don’t even have credit cards. Another huge chunk of American families pay off their credit cards as soon as they get the bill and thus don’t even owe anything to the credit card companies even though they have credit cards. Out of the remaining families only a very few owe $2,000 or more in credit card debt. Thus you can see that the “average American household” number is deceiving.
You may be curious why this is. In reality it’s very simple. It’s due to how they came up with their number for the average American’s debt. They took the outstanding credit card debt that is owed which is $750 billion and divided it by the number of American households that have a minimum of 1 credit card. This is approximately 84 million households. Thus they arrived at $8,000 per household.
An astounding 23.8% of American households don’t even have credit cards! These households weren’t included in the calculation since they don’t have credit cards. Another 31.2% of Americans pay off their cards as soon as they get the bill. This totals to an astounding 55% of American households that have no credit card debt.
Out of the remaining households only 29% owe more than $1,000 to credit card companies and only 21% owe $2,000 or more. If you consider that only 4% of households owe more than $10,000 and only 1% owe more than $21,000 then you will realize that most Americans owe very small in credit card debt. Most American households owe very small to nothing in credit card debt. The truth about American credit card debt is often hidden because of influences such as the media.