Debt Free News

Economic report states credit card debt and other debt concerns

January 15, 2007

Last week our debt free news department got wind of many of the newly released economic reports released. After taking a seriously close look at them, it seem debt id at the top of the list of concerns these days.

It is being reported in many of these economic reports that the continual growth of US consumer credit card debt and higher than expected retail sales performances in December are a main reason why consumer debt is growing and growing – and not really stopping either. Credit card debt is certainly not the way to become debt free – it is the way many US consumers end up with debt consolidation loans.

In the weeks to come, many of the US’s debt related economic advisors believe that we will continue to see rising concern about inflation on the horizon.

One economic report released this week has this to say about consumer credit card debt: It rose sharply in the month of November 2006 which directly impacts the nearly 9 billion dollar rise in revolving credit. It was much lower the month before in October when it stood slightly over $1.3 billion. All in all, US consumer credit card debt had increased to a total of about  $12.5 billion in November 2006.

Economic advisors will clearly tell our debt free news readers that this is a warning sign that consumers were certainly feeling secure enough during the early Holiday shopping season to certainly keep spending additional money. In fact, we are talking a lot of credit card use too. This as many of you know is a partial result do to waning  home equity values. Cars are being purchased because no revolving credit debt has risen another nearly $3.8 billion – many debt free article readers now that car loans are the most popular non revolving credit purchases.

We have also seen reports about International trade. For about 90 days, we have seen the US trade insufficiency decline somewhat as well. This was to the tune of about 600 million dollars between October and November. We did see in our debt free department that exports rose slightly by a measly 0.4% during the same time frame as well.

Crude oil is another debt free hot topic for our readers trying to save money at the pump – instead of adding to their credit card debt. We saw a slight fluctuation, but all in all – the price of oil per barrel fell in total by about nearly 3 dollars as well in that time.

Retail sales were very impressive which has surprised many of our debt consolidation customers too. Even though we already started to see a rise in consumer debt very early in the fourth quarter – and a slippery housing market (equity) people just kept on spending. Without considering auto sales – we saw an increase of 1% over speculated predictions in December alone. Even November showed an impressive .7% increase in retail sales. As we mentioned above – many of these sales were done with credit cards – prompting many of our debt article readers to wonder what this will due to credit card debt amounts in the months to come. The only real area of retail sales that did perform well was building materials. Due to the lack of major new home building, materials are not flying off the shelves as fast as they did in the past few years. Major home improvement retail outlets are not in despair as they report strong sales in gadgets and other areas of departments including tools. The lumber may not be making record sales, but other areas and departments are holding their own.

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