Many Americans know just how difficult it is to escape the credit card debt spiral.
Americans now owe a record $1.18 trillion on their credit cards, according to figures released this week by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
That sum could pay the annual wages of every public school teacher in the U.S. for about four-and-a-half years. And if you were to stack the amount in dollar bills, it would reach one-third of the way to the moon.
And more than 12 percent of all credit card debt was in serious delinquency, which means balances are at least 90 days overdue, marking a 13-year high.
Total credit card debt has ballooned by 53 percent in just four years since the start of 2021, The Independent’s analysis finds, as Americans struggled against inflationary pressures, an unaffordable housing market, and impacts from the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to a recent report by TransUnion, one of the three largest U.S. consumer credit reporting agencies, the average credit card debt per American in March was $6,371.
That figure was marginally down from $6,455 the month prior, but still up $153 from the same period in 2024.
The average credit card APR, meaning the interest rate charge by the banks, for accounts with existing balances is 21.91 percent, almost doubling in the last decade.
That can mean customers are paying enormous amounts of interest, as well as their original debt. If you were to, say, pay off the standard $6,371 debt in $150 monthly installments, you’d end up paying back more than double what you owed, and it would take more than five and a half years to pay off the full amount.
While overall credit card balances fell marginally in the first quarter of 2025, Erica Sandberg, a personal finance expert for CardRates.com, told The Independent that Americans aren’t yet safe from the debt monster.
“The good news is that we are already starting to see a decline in credit card debt,” Sandberg said. “However, this doesn’t mean that Americans are out of the woods. Student loan delinquencies are ramping up, and mortgage balances are higher.”
Credit card debt averages are weighted differently depending on the cardholder’s age, according to analysis from Forbes.
Generation X, those aged 45 to 54, harbored the most debt, with average balances hitting $9,255.
Baby Boomers, aged 60 to 78, and Millennials, aged 28 to 43, are almost neck and neck with average credit card debt of $6,648 and $6,642, respectively. The Silent Generation, those aged 79 and older, had $3,375.
