CreditKarma.com (www.creditkarma.com), the consumer’s credit advocate, today released its U.S. Credit Score Climate Report with trend data for June 2012. Nationally, credit card debt fell eight percent to $5,576 since the beginning of the year.
“The lackluster economy is partially to blame for the positive trend of decreasing credit card debt,” said Ken Lin, CEO of CreditKarma.com. “Consumers tend to take on more credit card debt when they feel more confident about their jobs and the economy. Because of the lack of confidence, I think we’ll continue to see credit card debt decrease throughout the year.”
Credit scores fell six points since January to 655 – the lowest national credit score since Credit Karma began tracking in February 2009.
Since January, the average consumer with an account has:
- Decreased home mortgage debt by one percent to $166,325
- Decreased home equity debt by .6 percent to $46,061
- Increased auto loan debt by five percent to $15,818
- Increased student loan debt by 16 percent to $29,390
Other key findings include:
- Consumers may be shifting from owning homes to renting – in June 2010, 38 percent of Credit Karma members nationally had mortgage debt compared to 27 percent in June 2012.
- On average, consumers with student debt have more than four student loan accounts. This is up from 3.4 a year ago and 3.7 since January 2012. Maryland ($33,667), Georgia ($32,724) and New York ($32,505) have the highest amount of student debt.
- Consumers are buying fewer cars, but those cars are more expensive – auto debt is up from a year ago, but the percentage of consumers with auto debt dropped from 41 percent to 38 percent nationally. Wyoming ($19,762), Texas ($19,096) and Alaska ($19,081) have the highest amount of auto debt while Wisconsin ($13,264) and Oregon ($13,479) have the least.
Methodology
Each month, the CreditKarma.com U.S. Consumer Credit Score Climate Report compares the current credit scores of its user base with previous scores pulled at least 30 days prior and no more than 90 days prior to the stated month. This month’s report includes a comparison of more than 612,809 CreditKarma.com user scores.
About CreditKarma.com
CreditKarma.com provides more than 6 million consumers with free credit scores and access to free credit monitoring to help them realize the everyday cost savings of having good credit by offering personalized savings recommendations for credit cards, student, auto, mortgage and home equity loans. It also provides financial education and access to free tools that empower consumers to take charge of their financial health including the Credit Report Card, Credit Score Simulator and Credit Card Statistics. To learn more, visit www.creditkarma.com.