Just 26% of Americans say they typically pay their monthly credit card bill in full. That is the lowest share in the history of the Primerica Financial Security Monitor survey, and the rest of the numbers fit the same picture.
A Squeeze With No Slack
Primerica found that 68% of households have little or no flexibility in their monthly budgets once essentials are covered, and 69% say income has fallen behind the cost of living. The bottom line: money is tight even where most other measures of household health have held steady in recent quarters.
Payments are also scattered. Cards, Buy Now, Pay Later plans, streaming services and other subscriptions all pull from the same account. Some 44% of respondents have used BNPL, up from 28% in September 2025. Primerica CEO Glenn J. Williams said such services make buying easier but make it harder to see the whole picture, and that it is “easier to overlook where money is going.”
The debt figures follow. More than a third (35%) say their card balance grew over the past three months. Among people carrying debt, 45% are more worried about it than a year ago, the highest reading since tracking began in March 2023.
Late Payments at Recession Levels
Federal Reserve data points the same way. In its three-year survey of 4,367 families, one in five households were behind on a loan payment. “Between the 2022 and 2025 surveys, the share of families that reported being behind on loan payments sharply increased from about 12 percent to almost 20 percent,” the report said. Families at least two months late on a bill rose 60 percent in three years. Median household debt, covering cards, student loans, mortgages and other borrowing, went from $170,200 in 2022 to $183,600 in 2025.
The last time Americans fell this far behind was the 2008 Great Recession, when unemployment ran at double today’s rate.
Prices Outrun Paychecks
Federal data show the cost of living up 39 percent since September 2016, against a 13 percent rise in median household income. High earners feel it too. A Goldman Sachs report found about 35 percent of people making more than $300,000 live paycheck to paycheck, roughly the same rate as those earning $50,000 to $100,000.
Consumer prices rose 3.4% over the 12 months to August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while real average hourly earnings fell 0.3%. Weekly paychecks held about even, up 0.3% after inflation, but only because the average workweek grew 0.6%. An hour of work bought less than a year earlier. Energy was the sharpest shock: gasoline up 27.4% and energy overall up 16.3%, with electricity up 3.8% and groceries 2.2%.
A Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll, run by Noble Predictive Insights on October 5 to 7 among 2,527 registered voters, found seven in ten say their household is worse off than a year ago. Among those earning under $50,000, 22% said income fell, against 6% of those earning over $100,000. Economist Orphe Divounguy said workers “have lost purchasing power,” and that slower inflation will not undo what households have absorbed. Families, he said, need income to outpace their own expenses.
Housing and the Fed’s Counterpoint
Rent adds to the load. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported record cost burdens in 2024, with 22.7 million households, or 49% of renters, spending more than 30% of income on rent and utilities. The median renter earning under $30,000 had $210 left each month after rent and utilities, down 60% since 2001 in inflation-adjusted terms.
Not every measure is bleak. The Fed’s household economics survey found 73% of adults doing okay or living comfortably near the end of 2025, a share steady since 2022, though it fell among low-income and younger adults. Asked about the poll, the White House pointed to the president’s economic record, citing the 2025 tax cuts and more than a million private-sector jobs created.
Sources
- National Survey: Growing Number of Payment Options Could Make It More Challenging for Middle-Income Families to See Full Financial Picture
- US families are behind on bills at rate not seen since Great Recession of 2008 – AOL
- Poll: Majority of voters say their household finances worse off than year ago – AOL
Photo: Vitaly Gariev / Unsplash (Unsplash License)
