Most Americans don't know how to handle debt.

Proof of this can be found here.



Roughly 18 percent of people who buy bitcoin use a credit card to do so, according to a new survey by loan marketplace LendEDU. Of those, 20 percent have not paid off their balance. The phrase "buy bitcoin with credit" has been trending on Google for weeks.

This lack of respect for debt has extreme consequences.

One consequence is an entire lifetime haunted by creditors.



The Federal Reserve reported earlier this week that Americans' outstanding credit card debt hit a new record in November as revolving credit, which is mostly credit card debt, jumped 13% to $1.02 trillion. The rise in credit use is evidence of a more confident U.S. consumer but it could also be an early warning sign of potential trouble on the horizon, analysts say.

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In a new survey conducted by YouGov for CreditCards.com, 35% of U.S. adults with credit card debt, or about 31 million, said they do not think they will ever get out of debt. Another 33% of Americans with credit card debt don’t know when they will be debt free. “With credit card debt currently at record levels, it’s frightening that so many Americans do not have a plan to get out of the red,” said CreditCards.com senior industry analyst Matt Schulz. “Simply put, there’s only so much credit card debt Americans can absorb without it causing real problems.”

As bad as this is, it's only credit card debt. It's much worse when you ask about all of the debt.



More than 68% of U.S. adults polled by CreditCards Opens a New Window. .com said they doubt they will be able to completely pay off their debts, which globally has ballooned to a record high of $233 trillion in the third quarter of 2017, according to the Institute of International Finance (IIF).

Total household debt is over $13 Trillion.



“Essentially, our credit cards are our social safety net,” said Deborah Thorne, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Idaho.

Historically, debt is associated with slavery, not a social safety net.

Gen X, in particular, will never be able to retire because of the debt.



Nearly two-thirds of Gen Xers think they'll just "figure things out" when retirement rolls around.

As you could have guessed, Millennials are being crushed by student loans.



A new Brookings Institution report offers startling results that suggest "the looming student default crisis is worse than we thought."

The analysis “suggests that nearly 40% [of borrowers] may default on their student loans by 2023,” according to Judith Scott-Clayton, a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings and author of the report.

At nearly $1.4 trillion in loans outstanding, student debt is now the second-largest source of household debt, after housing, and is the only form of consumer debt that continued to grow in the wake of the Great Recession, the report says.