The challenge of credit card debt and six ways to fix it

Acting financially responsible in America today has come to mean “borrow and repay,” says Barbara Kiviat, economic sociologist at Stanford University.

“It sort of crowds out the idea that maybe not borrowing in the first place is also a good idea,” Kiviat follows in an article by NPR. “But we’re now living in a world where so much hangs on that credit.”

We’ve bought into this financial structure. Literally.

Collectively, Americans owe nearly $1 trillion in credit card debt. In fact, total credit card debt remained at $986 billion at the beginning of 2023, unchanged from the record reached from the end of 2022, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank of New York report on household debt.

 

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