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Average American Debt: Household Debt Statistics, Average household debt hits $101,915
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Bullshit.
The ultra wealthy alone basically live in debt. They use debt for everything. That’s one reason they pay virtually no taxes. That would skew an “average”.
Also, mortgages and auto loans would make this way higher for average people.
OP gets the number for the post from here I suspect
https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-household-debt/
Debt doesn't reduce taxes. Not having income reduces taxes.
You can claim debt repayment on taxes and it reduces your income
General debt payments aren't deductible, certain interest payments are allowed, like mortgages, but there's a cap.
My old boss kept refinancing his house to keep all the debt tax free. Need a new Mercedes? Time to refinance.
Debt never gets taxed, it's not income. Debt forgiveness can be taxed as income though.
That's not a thing. Unless he was somehow laundering money through like cash mortgage payments and then refinancing cash out to spend.
The methodology here is suspect at best.
Simply dividing the amount of debt by the number of people does things like decrease the debt per person if there are children in the house.
There are other weird scenarios like non married people who own a house together. When you purchase a house with someone both parties are responsible for the debt, so 100% of the balance shows up on both their credit reports.
There may be some broad trends that can be gathered from this? If anybody has any idea what they are I'd be interested in hearing. Right now I can't think of any
Article says specifically ‘$59,580’ as the average amount.
Am confused where the remaining amount is coming in from OP for the remainder of folks.
Including mortgages? That’s not bad at all.
There is no way this figure includes mortgages....
I'm curious if it includes the house as an asset. Does a $300,000 house with a $200,000 mortgage count as $100,000 or $200,000 of debt?
It's per year. My parents were like "50 grand in debt? That's nothing!" which shows you the true state of the American economy.
Seems low, honestly. If you have a mortgage, chances are your debt is much higher.