What's in your wallet?

Yow. According to the Federal Reserve, America's non-residential consumer debt stands at over $ 2 trillion, a doubling of consumer debt in only 10 years. Three-quarters of a trillion is in revolving credit (such as credit cards), and the remainder is non-revolving (such as car loans). Total consumer debt, including mortgages, is just under $9 trillion. To me, that last figure is surprising, but not in the way that the article intends: on average, people's mortgages are only a little over three times as large as their other consumer debt combined. (For example, my mortgage is about 10 times the size of my other consumer debt, most of which is a car loan.) Okay, I know there are people who have paid off their mortgages (although I'd guess those are also folks who don't carry credit card debt), and I know there are lots of people who live in apartments and thus don't have mortgages. But do enough of them carry so much debt to offset the large mortgages? Apparently so: the article says that the average household consumer debt is around $9,000 (or around $13,000, if you're looking only at households that carry a credit card balance).