There have been a couple of episodes of Simpsons where “credit card debt” was the subplot. Should give a good idea how “relatable” the experience it was even in the older days. Obviously I’m exaggerating, but you get the idea.

I don't get how people come up with the idea of paying interests on a credit card. The interests are extortion level, 20%? Wtf? A personal line of credit is like 8%

Let me Google that for you ...

Ah, here it is https://bpi.com/missing-factors-in-the-cfpbs-analysis-of-ris...

The credit bureaus score based on the % of credit you use (and of course that you pay on time).

This is basically equivalent from a credit risk perspective, the banks don’t really care what % is interest vs. principal.

Not every sense - in the colloquial sense, people don't count that as being "in debt".

while true the connotation of the title would imply meaningful debt. And people who simply use cards for convenience and never hold a past due balance isn't really meaningful debt.

It's almost like counting the "debt" between ringing up your items at wal-mart and paying. For those 30 seconds you owe money.

Based on some quick stats you could totally turn that into a useless headline "Americans accrued 4.1 billion dollars of debt every 30 seconds in 2025"

> Not just technically. They literally have credit card debt in every sense of the word.

I mean technically yes that is absolutely correct. But we all know it's not what people think of as "debt", so as previous poster said, those should really be tracked separately. It is silly to consider the float between purchase time to payment time to be debt of the same type as debt carried over month to month.

For one thing, debt basically always (temporary offers aside) pays interest. The float between purchase to payment pays no interest.

But technicalities aside, the stats on credit card household debt would be much more revealing if they separated these numbers. They even indicate opposite things:

If the temporary float balances are going up, that suggests consumers are spending more and comfortably paying it, so the economy is doing well.

Whereas if the accruing monthly debt balances are going up, that's a sign the consumer is in trouble so the economy is probably doing badly.

we're looking at the 90+ day default line chart? 2008 saw an increase from sub 8% (which seems to be the norm) to 13%. 2023 was at 7% and we're right now sitting at 13% again. there are no other significant swings in credit card debt

There was a period during the late 2000s when credit card companies were offering 0% interest on balance transfers with no balance transfer fees, AND bonuses based on minimum card spend over a certain period after account opening. FatWallet (RIP) was full of people talking about how to use these offers to make loads of money in combination with rebates, eBay, bank account deposit bonus offers, and a lot more. Wild times. Long since over though.

I actually have a no-rewards credit union credit card that has no balance transfer fees and the lowest APR I’ve ever seen on a credit card.

It has bailed me out of paying high interest rates and fees during hard times before.

That very much depends.

Many years ago this "0% transfer" stuff was relatively new in the UK and a new outfit wanted to break into the market, they had two ideas which I guess they had costed as marketing ploys. First, the cards were a weird shape, this means there are a few applications where your card doesn't work, which is slightly annoying, but it's balanced by the brand recognition. Nobody cares which brand of rectangular plastic card you... oh, that's a weird shape.

But the Second was the easiest possible 0% transfer. To effect the transfer they write you a cheque for however much they'd agreed (let's say £1000) and you use that cheque to pay off a card or other line of credit. They charge 0% on this for 12 months.

What I, and lots of poor but money-savvy people did was sign up for the card. Deposit the cheque in an interet-bearing savings account, and set an alarm to pay the card off before that 0% expired.

So twelve months later you've made say £30 interest and you cut the card up. I don't know how many people did this, versus how many engaged with their product as they'd imagined. I know only two things:

1. I had about 50p outstanding balance to pay on my 12 month card, I figured they'd tell me I need to pay 50p within 30 days or whatever and if not they'd charge me extra - nope, they wrote saying "Your balance is negligible, we write off this tiny balance and don't expect to ever hear from you again".

2. This offer was never repeated. They did other 0% transfer offers but the "It's just a cheque" idea was never attempted again.

And you have no idea about theirs.

> that doesn't mean China doesn't have an enormous amount of leverage and influence.

Explain?

I'm saying bond prices would drop sharply if China tried to rapidly sell even 10% of its holdings.

When bond prices drop, US interest rates go up, which hurts the real US economy.

And when bond prices drop, that devalues the remaining 90% of China's holdings, hurting China too.

The Fed could stabilize the bond market by printing dollars to buy the bonds itself, but that would devalue the dollar and drive up inflation in the US. When China tries to repatriate that wealth, they must sell dollars and buy yuan, which would drive up the value of the yuan, driving up the cost of Chinese exports, hurting their manufacturing sector.

It's mutually assured destruction.

> US monopoly money has value mainly because of petro dollar.

A currency’s value reflects confidence in the economy issuing it. The dollar is backed implicitly by the size, productivity, and stability of the US economy.

As the world moves over to electricity instead of fossil fuels, the petrodollar/yuan isn't going to matter as much anymore.