TULSA, Okla. \u2014 Now that we’re deep in the holiday shopping season, it’s time to take a step back and consider how deep we’re willing to go in debt \u2014 and consider how long it takes to pay off holiday spending.<\/p>\n
Just over one-in-three of us took on debt to pay for the holidays in 2024, spending an average of $1,181. That’s up 15% from the year before, according to LendingTree.<\/p>\n
NerdWallet found 28% of credit card users are still paying off gifts from last year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Story Blocks<\/p>\n
HISTORICAL CONTEXT<\/p>\n
Five-Year Historical Trend (2019-2024) According to LendingTree’s historical data: <\/p>\n
2024: 36% of consumers went into debt, averaging $1,181 2023: 34% of consumers went into debt, averaging $1,028 2022: 35% of consumers went into debt, averaging $1,549 (the highest on record) 2021: 36% of consumers went into debt <\/p>\n
2020-2019: Data shows the trend was generally lower, with the pandemic years showing different spending patterns <\/p>\n
The data shows 2022 had the highest average debt at $1,549, while 2023 saw a significant 34% decrease to $1,028, but 2024 rebounded with the $1,181 average.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Story Blocks<\/p>\n
2025 SPENDING<\/p>\n
“Holiday shoppers are planning to spend, on average, nearly $200 more than they spent last year on gift purchases,” said Sara Rathner, a NerdWallet credit cards expert.<\/p>\n
If you’re putting those purchases on your credit card and can’t pay the balance at the end of the month, consider how much interest adds to the tab. Forty-two percent of card holders pay interest rates of 20% or higher.<\/p>\n
That often means the holiday spending can follow you well into the new year, sometimes into several years.<\/p>\n
“Ten percent of this year’s holiday shoppers have holiday-related debt going back multiple years,” Rathner said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Story Blocks<\/p>\n
HOLIDAY DEBT PAYOFF TIMELINE WITH MINIMUM PAYMENTS<\/p>\n
Here are the stark realities of making only minimum payments on holiday debt:
$1,000 debt at 21% interest rate making only the $25 minimum payment takes almost 6 years to pay off, according to CNBC. Total interest paid: Over $500<\/p>\n
“One of the best holiday gifts you can give yourself is to stay within a realistic budget,” Rathner said.<\/p>\n
To help get out of debt, consider transferring your credit card balance to a card with zero interest or use a personal loan with a much lower interest rate to help you pay down your debt.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n
Stay in touch with us anytime, anywhere —<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TULSA, Okla. \u2014 Now that we’re deep in the holiday shopping season, it’s time to take a step…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,5457,147,530,4631,5186,665,30923,520,151179,48161],"class_list":["post-287108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-consumer","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-problem","tag-ranking","tag-reports","tag-scam","tag-shopping","tag-solver","tag-tulsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}