Household Debt since 1980

If we take Household Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income, multiply by Disposable Personal Income, and divide by 100 we get Household Debt Service Payments in billions.

By the way, I'm working in annual data, here. Default units, unless noted. And billions, unless noted.

If we take Household Debt Service Payments (in billions) and subtract Monetary interest paid: Households, we get Principle Repaid on Household Debt.

If we take Principle Repaid on Household Debt, divide by Households and Nonprofit Organizations; Debt Securities and Loans; Liability, Level, multiply by 100, and ignore Nonprofit Organizations, we get Principle Repaid on Household Debt as a Percent of Household Debt Outstanding.

Make that

divide by (Households and Nonprofit Organizations; Debt Securities and Loans; Liability, Level (in billions) less Households and Nonprofit Organizations; Debt Securities and Loans; Liability, Level (in "Change, Billions"), multiply by 100, and ignore Nonprofit Organizations

By this adjustment the calculation shows the interest paid each year as a percent of the outstanding debt at the start of the year for household debt.

That leaves us (as of 2021-22) with principle repaid on household debt around 6% of household debt outstanding. That's near the high end of the range of values since 1980.

The average for the 1980-2022 period is 5.123%, say five percent. Principle repayment on average runs about 5% of outstanding household debt.

For comparison, monetary interest paid on household debt works out to 7.71% for the 1980-2022 period. It reached a bottom in 2021 at 4.40%, and rose in 2022 to 4.49%

For the last couple of years, with principle repayment around 6% of outstanding debt and interest cost near 4.5%, the debt service total is running about 10.5% of debt owed.

This graph shows household debt service as a percent of DPI (blue) and as a percent of household debt outstanding at the start of each year.