Have you taken a look at the U. S. Debt Clock lately?
It’s an eye opener, for sure. According to that calculation, consumer debt is nearly $10,000 per family nationwide. (That doesn’t count home mortgage debt, by the way.)
I know people who have no debts (except perhaps their home or car loan). I also know people who owe tens of thousands of dollars in just credit cards, not counting what they owe on their homes. It’s a huge burden for some people, and nothing to worry about for others.
If you are making loads of money and there’s no end in sight, it’s easier to carry a large debt load. But if anything goes wrong, or if that water faucet of money is suddenly turned off, you could be facing a big reality adjustment that can be quite a shock to deal with.
Oh, and here’s that U.S. Debt Clock, to show the raw numbers:
The U.S. Debt Clock shows many types of debts for the United States and its families.
So, this leads to the question:
Is personal debt getting out of control?
Here’s more about that:
U.S. personal debt is 16 TRILLION dollars.
U.S. national debt is 14.8 TRILLION dollars.
How can you visualize that large amount? Here’s an example. New York’s Empire State Building, if filled with pennies, would be about 1.8 trillion pennies.
The U.S. national debt would be about 8 Empire State Building’s worth of pennies, or 14.8 trillion pennies.
The U.S. personal debt would be almost 9 Empire State Building’s worth of pennies, or 16 trillion pennies.
Credit goes to www.kokogiak.com for this illustration.
What do you think? Is personal debt getting out of control?