Poll finds many stressed over debt

For starters, it doesn’t feel much like a recovery to many people. Unemployment is at 9.9 percent. Many with a job have seen paychecks shrink. A growing number of people are at risk of falling into foreclosure, and only those with good credit can get a new loan.

AP-GfK polls show 20 percent say the economy is good, versus 15 percent last year.

Ken Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board, a research group, says it’s individuals’ circumstances — more so than their sentiment about the economy — that shape their confidence and their stress.

People are whittling down their debt, though. The average amount owed on credit cards is $3,900, the poll said. That’s down from $5,600 in the fall.

Families with incomes over $50,000 have sliced their credit card debt by more than half, yet their stress from debt hasn’t changed much — it’s moderately low. Families with incomes under $50,000, however, have added only slightly to their debt, while their stress level rose sharply.

People are cutting debt at the fastest rate in more than six decades, according to the Federal Reserve. Those defaulting on mortgages and other loans factor into the reduction, economists point out.

Household debt fell 1.7 percent last year to $13.5 trillion, the Fed says. It was the first annual drop, based on records going back to 1945.

People on average carry $44,000 in debt — mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, and other consumer debt. That’s a far bigger load than in the early 1980s, when unemployment topped 10 percent. In 1982, per capita debt was about $14,000 in today’s dollars. Yet people are saving more: 4.2 percent of disposable income last year, the most since 1998, the Commerce Department says.