Maybe the percentage is exaggerated, but I have no doubt that more people are having trouble keeping debt under control. I’ve hit a point where my debt is indefinitely growing, despite throwing every spare cent at my cards, and I’ve always been good with my debt. In the process of not using one of them, another gets piled on. Half of my pay goes to mortgage/utilities and the rest goes to my cards which are used for gas/groceries/dog food/emergencies. I’ve cut out everything I can at this point. My wife and I haven’t gone out to dinner in almost a year, no vacations, and I’m hesitant to even take a day off because I will only get 8 hours of pay, losing the overtime. All of this, and my card debt still goes up every month by about $50, which isnt a lot, but it’s unsettling that it’s at a point of steady increase. In a few years, at least one of my cards will be maxed or close to it. One emergency like my last (3k in car repairs) will immediately max one of them. The only other options I have at this point are giving up my dogs, or starving myself. The working class, even the responsible ones, are struggling.

Yeah, this isn’t a new development. The vast majority of the country is awful with money. Hell, there is a reason there is the meme of the lottery winner being broke just a few years after winning big, and it isn’t because they paid off their debt, invested in reliable sources, and continued to live similarish to how they were before.

It seems more like they used past results when it was convenient for them for their graphic aids and not when it wasn’t. Articles like these pop up all the time and are usually attempting to sell services of some sort. There are numerous promotional links in the original Fox piece and the Debt.come survey.

Methodology: Debt.com surveyed 1,000 credit card holders about how high inflation has impacted on their debt. People responded from all 50 states and Washington, DC, and were aged 18 and above. Responses were collected through SurveyMonkey. The survey was conducted on February 27, 2024.

Surveymonkey is usually a site that’s used to solicit survey completion for a very small monetary compensation. I’d again wager that people who are filling out paid surveys online are likely a cash-strapped section of the population and contributing to the sample bias. This is all intentional though.