{"id":373625,"date":"2025-11-12T11:39:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T11:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/373625\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T11:39:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T11:39:18","slug":"how-to-pay-off-debt-from-last-year-while-planning-for-2025-holiday-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/373625\/","title":{"rendered":"How to pay off debt from last year while planning for 2025 holiday spending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TULSA, Okla. \u2014 Now that we&#8217;re deep in the holiday shopping season, it&#8217;s time to take a step back and consider how deep we&#8217;re willing to go in debt \u2014 and consider how long it takes to pay off holiday spending.<\/p>\n<p>Just over one-in-three of us took on debt to pay for the holidays in 2024, spending an average of $1,181. That&#8217;s up 15% from the year before, according to LendingTree.<\/p>\n<p>NerdWallet found 28% of credit card users are still paying off gifts from last year.<\/p>\n<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762947554_714_\" alt=\"pix 3.png\"  width=\"888\" height=\"780\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Story Blocks<\/p>\n<p><b>HISTORICAL CONTEXT<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Five-Year Historical Trend (2019-2024) According to LendingTree&#8217;s historical data: <\/p>\n<ul class=\"rte2-style-ul\">\n<li>2024: 36% of consumers went into debt, averaging $1,181 <\/li>\n<li>2023: 34% of consumers went into debt, averaging $1,028<\/li>\n<li> 2022: 35% of consumers went into debt, averaging $1,549 (the highest on record)<\/li>\n<li> 2021: 36% of consumers went into debt <\/li>\n<li>\n<p>2020-2019: Data shows the trend was generally lower, with the pandemic years showing different spending patterns  <\/p>\n<p>The data shows 2022 had the highest average debt at $1,549, while 2023 saw a significant 34% decrease to $1,028, but 2024 rebounded with the $1,181 average.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762947556_611_\" alt=\"pix 2.png\"  width=\"824\" height=\"710\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Story Blocks<\/p>\n<p><b>2025 SPENDING<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Holiday shoppers are planning to spend, on average, nearly $200 more than they spent last year on gift purchases,&#8221; said Sara Rathner, a NerdWallet credit cards expert.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re putting those purchases on your credit card and can&#8217;t pay the balance at the end of the month, consider how much interest adds to the tab. Forty-two percent of card holders pay interest rates of 20% or higher.<\/p>\n<p>That often means the holiday spending can follow you well into the new year, sometimes into several years.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ten percent of this year&#8217;s holiday shoppers have holiday-related debt going back multiple years,&#8221; Rathner said.<\/p>\n<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762947558_61_\" alt=\"pix 4.png\"  width=\"838\" height=\"694\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Story Blocks<\/p>\n<p><b>HOLIDAY DEBT PAYOFF TIMELINE WITH MINIMUM PAYMENTS<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Here are the stark realities of making only minimum payments on holiday debt: <br \/>$1,000 debt at 21% interest rate making only the $25 minimum payment takes almost 6 years to pay off, according to CNBC. Total interest paid: Over $500<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One of the best holiday gifts you can give yourself is to stay within a realistic budget,&#8221; Rathner said.<\/p>\n<p>To help get out of debt, consider transferring your credit card balance to a card with zero interest or use a personal loan with a much lower interest rate to help you pay down your debt.<\/p>\n<p><b>This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Stay in touch with us anytime, anywhere &#8212;<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TULSA, Okla. \u2014 Now that we&#8217;re deep in the holiday shopping season, it&#8217;s time to take a step&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":373626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[64,2436,255,13996,16996,10545,12842,2107,179835,123829,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-373625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-consumer","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-problem","12":"tag-ranking","13":"tag-reports","14":"tag-scam","15":"tag-shopping","16":"tag-solver","17":"tag-tulsa","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115536538990657556","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}