People in Virginia who have credit card balances or other debts can find out how their debt compares to the state average and the averages across American by taking a look at Experian’s State of Credit report for 2017. The report discloses the average debt in every state and the country as a whole. It also breaks the information down into categories, like credit card debt and mortgages and student loans, and includes several other facts and figures.
The big news from the report is that Americans accumulated an all-time high amount of debt in 2017 at just over $1 trillion. Credit card debt increased over the course of the year with an average balance of $6,354. The median mortgage debt was $201,811, and the average student loan debt was $34,144, which set a record for that category.
Experian points out that the word ‘average” does not mean the same thing as ‘typical.” There were regional differences in mortgages, and some people pay off their credit card debt on a monthly basis rather than letting them carry over and accumulate interest charges.
Overall, Experian says that, in general, Americans owe a lot of money, and many people are having difficulty with repaying their debt. It. During the third quarter of 2017, 7.5 percent of credit card debt was in default, and one in three people with student loans made at least one late payment during the year.
Experts advise that people who want to get a handle on their debt can adopt one of several strategies. The snowball method involves paying off the account with the lowest balance as quickly as possible while making only minimum payments on other accounts. Once that is accomplished, the next step is to do the same with the next-lowest balance. Another strategy is to tackle debts with high interest rates first regardless of the balances.
When monthly payments are overwhelming even though someone has a job, he or she could consider restructuring his or her payments under Chapter 13 bankruptcy. It is sometimes called a wage earner’s bankruptcy because rather than liquidating assets to pay creditors, the debtor makes affordable monthly payments for a period of time, and then the remaining debt is dismissed.