Credit card debt is at an all-time high, putting households near a ‘breaking point,’ study shows

More consumers are leaning on credit cards to afford increasingly expensive necessities like food and rent.

That helped propel total credit card debt to a record $930.6 billion at the end of 2022, a 18.5% spike from a year earlier, according to the latest quarterly report by TransUnion. The average balance rose to $5,805 over that same period.

At this rate, households are nearing a “breaking point,” according to a separate study by WalletHub.

Using the Great Recession as a guide, the projected breaking point is the level of household credit card debt that will become unsustainable...