Credit card debt nationally fell 8% to $5,576 since the beginning of the year, according to CreditKarma.com's U.S. Credit Score Climate Report for June.
Credit scores fell six points since January to 655, according to the report released Wednesday. It marked the lowest national credit score since Credit Karma began tracking trend data in February 2009.
“The lackluster economy is partially to blame for the positive trend of decreasing credit card debt,” says Ken Lin, CEO of CreditKarma.com. “Consumers tend to take on more credit card debt when they feel more confident about their jobs and the economy. Because of the lack of confidence, I think we’ll continue to see credit card debt decrease throughout the year.”
Since January, the average consumer with an account has:
• Decreased home mortgage debt by 1% to $166,325
• Decreased home equity debt by .6% to $46,061
• Increased auto loan debt by 5% to $15,818
• Increased student loan debt by 16% to $29,390
Other key findings include:
• Consumers may be shifting from owning homes to renting - in June 2010, 38% of Credit Karma members nationally had mortgage debt compared to 27% in June 2012.
• On average, consumers with student debt have more than four student loan accounts. This is up from 3.4 a year ago and 3.7 since January 2012. Maryland ($33,667), Georgia ($32,724) and New York ($32,505) have the highest amount of student debt.
• Consumers are buying fewer cars, but those cars are more expensive – auto debt is up from a year ago, but the percentage of consumers with auto debt dropped from 41% to 38% nationally. Wyoming ($19,762), Texas ($19,096) and Alaska ($19,081) have the highest amount of auto debt while Wisconsin ($13,264) and Oregon ($13,479) have the least.
The report each month compares the credit scores of its user base with previous scores pulled at least 30 days prior and no more than 90 days prior to the stated month. This month's report includes a comparison of more than 612,809 CreditKarma.com user scores.
