RECORD Number of Americans Have Stopped Paying Their Bills

Añadido: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]We have quite a situation going on right now in America.

[00:00:04]As of today, we have a situation that needs to be respected and understood and at the same time not become part of it and figure out a way of crushing it on the other side. You see, the situation in the United States where Americans are carrying more debt than ever before and they're starting to default on payments more than ever before.

[00:00:27]You see, essentially people have stopped paying their bills.

[00:00:30]Now, this is all according to Consumer Affairs who tracks this stuff pretty diligently and one thing that they found out is that the national average individual debt load right now that people are carrying has more than doubled since 2003. Back in 2003, or not since but during that time, right? That was that peak. People used to carry about on average $32,000 in individual debt, right? Which is a ton of money. Well, that's nothing because compared to now, right now we're sitting at over $63,000 as of 2025. So, when you look at 2020 uh sorry, 2003 as this time where debt peaked, where the craziness was happening, buying up homes and cars like crazy on debt, opening up credit cards, and then you see it peak a little bit higher in 2005, not the amount of debt that they're carrying but or sorry, not the amount of leverage they had on that, right? The assets were going up that they leveraged. You look now at 2025 and you go, "Holy cow, we are way worse than the bubble that formed back in the early 2000s before the Great Recession, right?" So, you can pretty much bet that it's already higher by now because it's already 2026. Now, that was 2025 numbers. And this debt is so high that it actually outpaces the country's average annual individual income, which is estimated to be around $45,000 and change. That's the average individual income.

[00:02:04]All right? That's not a mistake.

[00:02:08]That's household income, which is around um that's like one person, but the household income sits around $84,000 a year, right? That's the median household income. But individually, people make about $45,000, right? This makes the nationwide debt-to-income ratio for a lot of people at around 139%, which is almost 140%.

[00:02:31]And when you're already stretching that thin, anything that comes up, like a car repair, a doctor's visit, any sort of financial hiccup, right? Can cause them to lose everything.

[00:02:43]Now, this is why I think it's so important to get ahead and learn how to make money, whether that start a side business, do the um tax liens, that's incredible. Those are just blowing up and people are making more money. I'll throw a link down below if you want to uh check out that program. But, you need to learn how to make money as people are not learning how to make money and they're losing because it's going to tie into all kinds of issues.

[00:03:06]Um you know, something that's interesting is when you adjust or actually when the government or these private companies that look at these numbers adjust the numbers for inflation, the average person's uh debt only went up by 10%.

[00:03:20]But, that's in nominal terms. It's in reality, it's basically doubled.

[00:03:25]Okay? So, this is how the government changes these numbers. And that's been the underlying issue that I've talked about before is that when the government messes with these numbers and they make it look like it's not that bad, but it really in all reality is because most people do not go to to dinner parties and go, "Oh my gosh, I'm at this percentage of debt. How are you doing?"

[00:03:47]And they don't get a consensus of the room. In all reality, everyone's super hush-hush and quiet and they want you to think that that brand new car outside you could actually afford, when all reality you're barely keeping up with the payments, right? And you're barely keeping up with the the level of inflation that's going on. It's going to get to a point in the future where they're about where they're going to have so many people not being able to afford basic necessities anymore that something major is going to actually happen. Either we're going to, you know, see prices collapse because people stop spending money on stuff and companies need to make money, so they're going to keep trying to sell by lowering prices, or we're going to go into a situation where we're getting uh pretty much universal basic income from the government because it will be the only way that society as we know it will be able to continue to function. But when that happens, that's only going to exacerbate the inflation scenario, right? So, this massive surge in people not paying their bills is not uh distributed very evenly. Some parts of the economy or the country are being hit much harder than others, and they found these companies that are out there searching this stuff, they found that Utah is actually the most debt-burdened state in the entire country, which is not exactly what you'd think it would be, right? I would think it'd be somewhere like Canada or Canada, Florida, uh Colorado. Canada, I'm just thinking about the cost of buying a house over there. Holy cow. Um New York, right? Uh where the cost of living is extremely high and people have got to borrow an insane amount of money just to get by. But it actually turns out that Utah uh is that highest number, and the average resident there has a debt-to-income ratio of 199%.

[00:05:32]Yeah, it's interesting, you know, I don't got a model car right now, but uh you know, I look at uh you know, those auto YouTubers that that, you know, that have their channels in Utah, and they think they're just crushing and they've got all these how the mansions and the cars. You know, I wouldn't buy a car unless I could pay cash for it. You know, as a matter of fact, I'm saving up right now. I set aside the money for a new Lotus. And I said, even though I have enough money to pay for it cash, what I'm doing is I'm putting into a specific cryptocurrency. When it doubles, I'm going to take out the profit, sell it, pay the tax on it, and go buy the Lotus. And and so even though I've got the money to buy it cash, I'm still not doing that. I'm going one more step, you know? Bugs my wife though, because we do that with houses, too.

[00:06:16]So you see, basically in Utah, they're sitting there at a 199% ratio, spending twice as much money as they make in Utah.

[00:06:26]Think about that for a second.

[00:06:28]They're spending twice as much money as they make. This is happening all over the country. Now, how is a situation like this sustainable? How many years can you go like that before you are filing bankruptcy?

[00:06:40]You're not paying off any of your bills anymore. You're no longer in a situation where you can buy a house. A lot of landlords don't want to rent to you at that point, right? And then your credit gets jacked. So what's your next step?

[00:06:53]Do you go homeless if you're in that situation? Do you move to a cheaper area? You know, you're living in a tent, possibly, camping out in the wilderness.

[00:07:01]That's why I think it's important for people to prepare now and start a side business, get a different way of making money. Whether it be trading stocks or crypto or buying tax liens and deeds.

[00:07:11]Holy cow, that's an incredible opportunity. As a matter of fact, my daughter's coming home after she graduates college here, and we're we're going to start firing off tax liens and deeds for her. That's what I'm personally teaching her.

[00:07:24]And then she's going to run that company for me. This is a big deal. It's It's opportunities that most people aren't paying attention to while they're completely drowning in debt. They're going and buying the latest and greatest, you know, watches or side-by-sides or you know, Lamborghinis, the things they can't afford.

[00:07:43]Now, mortgage delinquencies is a whole 'nother thing. Um mortgage uh delinquencies are now what it what um they're rising and the foreclosures are rising. Um auto debt delinquencies right now are at 3% and mortgage debt delinquencies I think are still under 1%, but you have to realize that um banks are doing the extend and pretend.

[00:08:03]You're going to find that out in the next year or two. Um it's a big deal. Student loan delinquencies are up there, but a lot of people are wanting to pay those cuz they're afraid that if they stop paying, they're not current and Trump comes out with another program to pay them off, they you know, they'd be out. So, they're paying those.

[00:08:21]But where we see places like Louisiana, for example, incomes are a lot lower than they are in Utah. And we're seeing the highest rates of homeowners there in Louisiana start to fall behind on their mortgages. And that's why Louisiana is ranked as the second worst state where residents are most burdened by debt after Utah.

[00:08:41]You know, over there um their debt-to-income ratio is at 136% and they've got the highest mortgage delinquency rate at about 1.83% and again, don't be fooled by these low numbers cuz they start somewhere. And when you see the banks cascade like what the counties did recently with the tax liens and deeds, they were holding those back and not putting properties to auction uh for years after COVID and then they hit the ground running and said, "Hey, we need the money." and they dumped them on the open market and now there's so many of them, investors are having a hard time sucking them up.

[00:09:13]In Nevada, Nevada's third place because of its high credit card delinquency rate and it's that uh delinquency rate on credit cards in Nevada, 16.3%.

[00:09:23]And they have a debt-to-income ratio of 167%.

[00:09:26]Nevada has the highest share of credit card debt that's seriously past due, which is showing a lot of people are relying on credit cards to be able to get by, but it's also destroying their credit score as well. In the state of Mississippi, you've got more people than ever anywhere else who are falling behind on their student loan payments. Right there, 13% of Mississippi residents are behind on their student loan balances, which are 90 days or more past due.

[00:09:55]You know, and even though Mississippi has one of the lowest average individual debt balances in the country, they still rank eight in the most debt-burdened states. Look, we could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is it's getting worse. And it's bad getting worse. So, why not start now? Save your money. Don't get into deeper debt.

[00:10:16]You know, you see me, I'm super risk off right now. I'm mostly in cash. Even when I go buy a new car, I'm like, "Hey, even though I've got the cash I saved up and invested to get the cash, I'm going to flip it one last time on the crypto markets, or I'm going to buy tax liens and get that rate of return, get the mailbox money. I'm going to go buy the car with somebody else's money, not mine."

[00:10:36]And you don't see me leasing, you don't see me paying payments. I just go pay cash.

[00:10:40]Because if I want it bad enough, I pay cash. All right, with that being said, if you want to learn about tax liens and deeds, no joke, the link down below, it'll take you to a page that'll teach you all about it and talk about it and show you how big of an opportunity this is. And you want to have those skills while all of this is blowing up.

[00:10:58]All right, with that being said, the Economic Ninja is out.