Anna Helhoski

It found that revolving credit card debt, and those are the balances that you carry from month to month on your credit card if you haven't paid it off, has increased by more than 4% over the last year.

And the average amount for those households with revolving credit card debt was $11,413 as of September.

Yeah, absolutely, Sean.

So I asked data studies writer Erin Elisa back to talk about that figure and some of the other findings from the report.

So Erin, welcome back to Smart Money.

Thanks for having me back.

Let's start with that top number.

What's driving the increase in credit card debt?

Yeah, that's pretty much what I would expect.

So nearly half of Americans consider carrying revolving credit card debt normal.

Is this a shift in attitudes, necessity, or both?

And how concerning is the normalization itself?

Does viewing debt as a routine budget line item change how long people stay in debt or how aggressively they try to pay it down?

Right.

It's like, though, we're all in this together.

What about some other types of debt?

What's happening there?

So something that you point out in the study, it doesn't feel like typical income is keeping up with living costs, but that's not actually the case, right?

Now, not everyone's income is keeping up with expenses, and that means turning to credit cards, which we've talked about, loans, which we've talked about, as well as buy now, pay later.

Can you talk a little bit about that specifically?