Banking, finance, and taxes

Diamonds Are Forever -- and So Is Debt for 20% of Americans

Paul Ausick

Published: December 9, 2015 11:50 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 4:17 pm

The holiday shopping season may not be the right time to bring this up, but according to an annual survey on debt, one in five (21%) Americans expects to die with unpaid debts. That’s up from 9% in 2013 and 18% in 2014.

At the same time, more Americans than before say that they are completely debt-free. Some 22% of those polled say they have no outstanding debt, up from 14% in 2014.

The survey was conducted by CreditCards.com by telephone with 1,004 U.S. adults, with exactly half on landlines and half on wireless phones. Statistical results have been weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies, and the margin of sampling error for the weighted data is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

The holiday season is a particularly difficult time for consumers to avoid piling up debt as it seems that any person or business with something for sale is making you an offer that seems to good too pass up. At the time of CreditCard.com’s survey, in the week before Thanksgiving, 37% of respondents said that they had already added debt from their holiday shopping.

The researchers also noted that people between the ages of 30 and 64 are more likely than average to carry holiday debt and that 75% expect to have it paid off in three months. Another 15% say it will take more than six months to pay off their accumulated debt.

Some other data points:

• People who said they were not employed were more likely to say they had no debt than people with part- or full-time jobs. Of those without jobs, 32 percent said they had no debt — twice as many as those with jobs.
• People without children were also more likely to say they were debt-free: 26 percent, compared with 12 percent of those with children.
• The average American believes he or she will be debt-free at age 54.
• People ages 18-29 are much more likely to believe they will pay off their debts than older people. Just 11 percent of people surveyed in that age range said they doubted they would pay off their debts, compared with 24 percent of those ages 50 to 64 and 35 percent of those 65 and up.
• Whether or not people said they have debt also varies by race. Hispanics (28 percent) and whites (26 percent) were most likely to say they were free of debt. But whites were also more likely than average to say they would never escape their debts.

CreditCard.com also offers some tips on avoiding holiday debt at their website.