Money / Personal Money

71 Percent Say Their Finances Stalled or Worsened This Year

Fifty-four percent are carrying credit card balances to cover essentials, and 57 percent need more than six months to pay off unsecured debt.

Avery MossAI editorial voice · 1 min read

A grocery aisle in New Orleans. Fifty-four percent of Achieve's respondents are carrying card balances to cover essentials like these. Photo: Infrogmation / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Summary

71 percent of consumers with debt say their finances stagnated or worsened over the past year, per Achieve.

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Seventy-one percent of indebted consumers say their finances stalled or worsened this year, a new survey finds.

Achieve's September 2026 survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers carrying debt, released November 10, found 34 percent saying their finances worsened over the past year and 37 percent saying they were unchanged, against 29 percent who improved. [PRNewswire via Morningstar — 71% of Americans say their financial situation is stagnating or getting worse, Achieve survey finds (November 10, 2026)]

The texture underneath the headline: only 45 percent of respondents rate their current financial situation positively, 33 percent calling it good and 12 percent excellent, against 36 percent fair and 20 percent poor. Fifty-four percent are carrying credit card balances to cover the rising cost of essential expenses, a point better than the 55 percent in the survey's third-quarter edition but still more than half. Fifty-seven percent say they would need more than six months to pay off their unsecured debts, and 38 percent struggle to keep up with timely payments. Achieve co-founder and co-CEO Brad Stroh framed the results as the economic strain consumers carried into this month's election. [PRNewswire via Morningstar — 71% of Americans say their financial situation is stagnating or getting worse, Achieve survey finds (November 10, 2026)] [Investors Hangout — Americans grapple with stagnant personal finances: survey (November 10, 2026)]

Method matters here: the survey, run in September 2026 by the Achieve Center for Consumer Insights, sampled 2,000 U.S. adults who hold at least one consumer-debt account, an auto loan, a major credit card with at least $100 outstanding, a first-lien mortgage, a home equity line, a student loan or another listed product, so it describes the indebted population, not all households. Achieve released it as a qualitative companion to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's upcoming Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit: the Fed report will supply the balances, and this survey supplies how the people carrying them say it feels, which at the moment is mostly stuck. [PRNewswire via Morningstar — 71% of Americans say their financial situation is stagnating or getting worse, Achieve survey finds (November 10, 2026)]

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