There is more and more proof that the debt of many individuals has been on the rise in recent years. The credit card industry in the last few years has bombarded the average consumer with about twenty applications for credit in about a week. If a fraction of these households reply to these offers you are looking at quite a large statistic. Visa and Master Card hold the largest shares with approximately eighty-three percent and this was reported from 2006. The statistics show that in 2006 alone there were 984 million bank issued cards. The interest rate averages out to be about 13.46 percent however; with the universal rate in most terms and conditions today you can see the top interest rates skyrocket to as much as 31%. There can be no wonder as to why the typical consumer has incurred such astonishing debts.

The average citizen will carry about thirteen balances and they aren’t necessarily credit card debt. This can include mortgages, student loans and auto loans. The majority of the debt does appear to be credit cards. The American consumer debt was said to be 904 Billion dollars in June of 2007, this number rose from the end of 2006 when it was 879 Billion dollars. While about forty percent of credit card holders paid their balances in full each month in 2006 it has been shown that 8.3 percent have a balance of approximately nine thousand dollars. Nine out of every thirteen payment obligations are going to be credit cards. According to the American Bankers Association, Federal Reserve one in six families with credit cards pay only the minimum due every month.

Myfico.com which tracks credit worthiness and reports credit scores shows that most consumers are paying their bills on time. Three out of ten consumers have ever been more than sixty or more days late on a payment. Seventy-seven percent have never had a debt payment that was 90 or more days in arrears. The statistics also show that only about twenty percent or less has had a loan or account closed by the lender due to default. There is a balance of less than one thousand dollars that is carried by about forty percent of credit card holders. The combined amounts of all credit cards that you can have access to is close to nineteen thousand dollars. More than half of all credit card holders use less than thirty percent of their credit lines.

While you may think that most credit card debt is used for dining out or large ticket item purchases there is evidence to show that medical expenses are a larger expense for some. It seems that twenty-nine percent of low and middle income bracket households have had to use their credit cards for medical reasons this according to www.demos.org. The high probability that these income brackets don’t have insurance may have been the reason for the use of a credit card for medical debts. Low interest rates are the deciding factor for many in why they choose one card over another.