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Why aren’t Americans paying their bills? More customers are not paying their bills. Veronica Dagher reports for The Wall Street Journal:
More Americans are falling short on their financial responsibilities, like paying their bills or meeting with their financial adviser. In many cases, it’s happening because, they say, they simply forgot.
Financial advisers and researchers say plenty of people are missing payments because they can’t afford them. Stress due to inflation, the Covid-19 pandemic and stock-market volatility is also causing them to miss items on their money to-do lists, they say.
Forgetting to rebalance your portfolio can lead to higher tax bills and poor investments, while missing a credit-card or other bill can damage your credit score or lead to higher rates and late-payment fees, say the advisers.
For the six months ended June 30, JPMorgan Chase said 1.05% of its credit-card customers were 30 days delinquent, slightly up from 1.01% a year ago. For auto loans, it was 0.69%, up from 0.42%. At Wells Fargo, credit-card and auto-loan delinquency rates also rose. The banks don’t disclose which customers are a day or a few days late.
More Americans are behind on their utility payments as well. As of May, more than 1.4 million residential Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers were past due on bill payments, compared with about 915,000 customers in February 2020, the utility said.
Read more here.
