United States | News & Politics

This is the best summary I could come up with:

After years of managing household budgets through the stress of the worst inflation in a generation, US families are increasingly pressured by a different kind of financial squeeze: The cost of carrying debt.

The figures suggest a difficult reality for the millions of consumers who are the engine of the US economy: The era of high borrowing costs — however necessary to slow price increases — has a sting of its own that many families may feel for years to come, especially the ones that haven’t locked in cheap home loans.

Nikki Cimino, a 40-year-old recruiter living in Denver, said she finally saved up enough to buy a condo last year, but missed out on the ultra-low interest rates that had made homeownership more affordable in the early days of the pandemic.

It helps that many families are relatively well-positioned to service that debt: Broad wage gains mean workers are pulling in larger paychecks, and higher home prices have bolstered many households’ net worth.

While the share of income going to debt service is higher than it was three years ago — when stimulus checks were making it easier for people to throw money at their credit card bills — it is still low by historical standards.

And part of the reason some Americans were able to take on a substantial load of non-mortgage debt is because they’d locked in home loans at ultra-low rates, leaving room on their balance sheets for other types of borrowing.

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