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WPCNR QUILL & EYESHADE From Wallet Hub. June 11, 2018:

The personal-finance website WalletHub today released two key reports, one showing that consumers repaid $40.3 billion in credit card debt during Q1 2018, the second-biggest quarterly paydown ever, and the other finding that a Federal Reserve rate hike on Wednesday would cost people with credit card debt an extra $1.6 billion this year alone.

Below, you can find a handful of highlights from WalletHub’s Q2 2018 Fed Rate Hike Report and its 2018 Credit Card Debt Study, which is accompanied by a nationally representative credit card survey.

• At 3.80% for Q1 2018, the charge-off rate (the amount of defaulted credit card balances written off compared to the amount of funds charged) is up nearly 6% year over year and at the highest point since mid-2012.
• We began the year owing more than $1 trillion in credit card debt for the first time ever, after adding a post-Great Recession record $91.6 billion to our tab in 2017.
• 37% of people think travel is worth getting into debt for, behind just housing (47%) and health care (61%).
• 89% of people say their personal finances are run better than the federal government.
• 41% of people with credit card debt say they’ll pay it off in less than a year.
• The Fed has cost the average homebuyer roughly $42,000, if you assume its six recent rate hikes are fully responsible for the rise in the average mortgage APR since January 2015.