Americans Now Pay as Much Interest on Other Debt as on Mortgages
- Bills for consumer debt service hit record high this year
- Mortgage burden still near historic lows with locked-in deals
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US households are now paying roughly as much interest on other kinds of debt, from credit cards to student loans, as they are on their mortgages, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Non-mortgage interest payments climbed to an annual rate of $573.4 billion in January. That’s the highest on record even after adjusting for inflation — and within a hair’s breadth of the $578.3 billion in annual mortgage interest that households were shelling out as of the last quarter of 2023.