Credit card debt has a way of sneaking up on you. A few hundred dollars carried over from one month becomes a few thousand, and before long, you’re paying more in interest than you spend on new purchases.
If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, outstanding credit card balances reached $1.26 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of $54 billion from a year earlier. A study among a nationally representative sample of 2,000 U.S. adults who reported having some type of debt in the past year by Accredited…