this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I've sometimes seen credit card debt used as a proxy for financial difficulties. For the US:

https://wallethub.com/edu/cc/credit-card-debt-study/24400

So...there are some things that aren't ideal about that graph. For one, it's not inflation-adjusted; a dollar in 2000 is just under $2 in 2026. So it's got an upwards-trending line, but a very substantial portion of that is actually just the result of inflation. And I'd kinda prefer to have a median value, though since I'm just comparing relative numbers rather than getting an absolute value, it's probably not a huge deal.

But based on that, credit card debt has increased. And for most age groups, it's higher in inflation-adjusted terms than it was 25 years ago. The 18-29 group is about the same, in inflation-adjusted terms


they had an average of about $500 25 years back, and about $1000 today. That's an increase of about 2x in nominal terms, so no movement in real terms.

But people in their 40s have about 3x the amount of credit card debt in nominal terms as did the same age group in 2000. So that's a real increase; it's about 1.5x in real terms. Ditto for people in their 50s.

People in their 70s have something like 6x as much in nominal terms, or about 3x in real terms, as the people who were in their 70s in 2000, which is a pretty meaningful increase. For them, it's not a COVID-19 surge, but just a long, sustained drift.

Note that if you're asking about, say, just the last few months, OP, this only runs to late 2025.