Household debt can be a helpful tool for managing major expenses, like buying a home or paying school tuition, but it can also become a significant burden if left unchecked. To better understand the challenges households face with debt, WalletHub conducted a nationally representative online survey. You can check out the results below. These findings help add context to the statistics in our latest Household Debt Report.
Key Stats
- Credit Access Concerns: Nearly 2 in 5 Americans don’t support a 10% cap on credit card interest rates if it means that only people with excellent credit will get approved for credit cards.
- Debt Expected to Rise: More than 1 in 3 people expect their household debt to increase in the next 12 months.
- No Room for More Debt: 47% of Americans say their household can’t handle more debt.
- Sick of Debt: 44% of Americans think their household debt is affecting their health.
- Budgeting for Relief: 65% of people think better budgeting will solve their problems with debt.
Full Survey & Responses
| How do you expect your household debt to change in the next 12 months? | |
|---|---|
| Increase | 35% |
| Decrease | 33% |
| No change | 32% |
| Is your household struggling with debt? | |
| No | 54% |
| Yes | 46% |
| What type of debt is your household struggling with the most? | |
| Credit card | 53% |
| Mortgage | 20% |
| Student loan | 11% |
| Personal loan | 9% |
| Auto loan | 8% |
| Is your household debt affecting your health? | |
| No | 56% |
| Yes | 44% |
| Do you think you will still have debt when you die? | |
| Yes | 55% |
| No | 45% |
| Do you feel like credit card companies own you? | |
| No | 55% |
| Yes | 45% |
| Is it important for people to track their net worth? | |
| Yes | 80% |
| No | 20% |
| Do you support a 10% cap on credit card interest rates if it means that only people with excellent credit will get approved for credit cards? | |
| Yes | 63% |
| No | 37% |
| Can your household handle more debt? | |
| Yes | 53% |
| No | 47% |
| Do you think better budgeting will solve your debt problems? | |
| Yes | 65% |
| No | 35% |
Note: Percentages may not total 100% due to rounding.
Survey Methodology
This report reflects the results of a nationally representative online survey of 200 respondents.
After we collected all responses, we normalized the data by age, gender and income so the sample would reflect U.S. demographics.
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