Financial challenges triggered by Covid-19
In a survey completed by Bankarete.com 42% of consumers in the US with credit card debt have increase their balances since Covid-19 arrived at north America in March 2020. 47% of those with increase said, this was caused by the pandemic.
These results bring to our mind a known and widespread problem, credit card debt is easy to grow and hard to reduce. And one of the main reasons of why getting out of credit debt is so hard is that the average annual percentage rate is more than 16%.
In the US the average person with credit card debts owes $5,525. And many of them can only afford to pay the minimum payments, resulting staying in debt for about 16 years and pay a high $6,000 in interest.
With a rough difficult future for that 42%, one of the possible solutions is to negotiate lower rates or to elaborate a plan to get debt free, usually Nonprofit credit counseling agencies can assist consumers at no cost. Borrowers can also consider consolidating their debts with a new loan, reducing expenses to battle debt, prioritize debts with the highest interest rates first, etc.