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Credit card write offs are rising in the US:

Note that the data does not appear to be adjusted for inflation, but the trend appears to be very clear nonetheless. I think four things stand out.

First, post-Covid people have had to borrow to cover for declining real incomes. Inflation has obviously not helped this trend.

US real (median) income is up since 2022 and significantly up from 2018.

Sigh.

5 thoughts on “Ho Hum”

  1. Wild guess; CC balances rose over ’20 and ’21, and then the holders got hit by the subsequent rise in interest rates.

    Median income rising may be meaningless, in the face of higher prices, as it would be higher disposable income needed in order to pay down the higher CC balances.

    Depends. I have no idea if the CC write offs referenced are actual complete write downs, or whether there’s a recovery rate attached.

    Unless they all withdrew cash and whacked it straight into GME or something.

  2. “US real (median) income is up since 2022 and significantly up from 2018.”

    Depends on whose figures you use to calculate inflation. When they’ve excluded everything we spend most of our money on from the stats, sure.

  3. A pretty regular complaint over the past 3 years has been that inflation according to the MSM and the Admin is quite a bit lower than that experienced by the hoi polloi.

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