Good News…..Right?

Americans paid off $40.3 billion dollars of credit card debt in the first three months of 2018. That’s the second-highest amount paid off during a quarter ever. Sounds like great news, right? We’re finally getting serious about reducing high interest debt and getting things under control.

Not exactly. A big part of the reason we paid off so much is because we have so much more debt to pay off. The full story is here, but it’s not pretty. We tallied up $91.6 billion in new credit card debt in 2017 and the total amount of outstanding credit card debt is now the second highest its been since 2008.

This is the truly damaging thing about high interest debt. You have to pay more and more just to try to stay even, or not fall further behind. It’s best, of course, to avoid credit card debt altogether but that’s just not realistic for most people. It’s never too late to start tackling yours. Getting started today is definitely better than waiting until tomorrow, or worse yet “someday.”