Credit card debt hits eight-year low

The amount of credit card debt the average consumer now carries has slipped below $5,000 for the first time in close to a decade.

According to the latest quarterly findings from TransUnion, consumers cut theirpersonal credit card debt by 4.1 percent in the second quarter of the year. That figure fell from the $5,156 seen last quarter to $4,951, marking the first time the average consumer’s debt was below $5,000 since the first quarter of 2002. Further, that number was a 13.4 percent drop from the same period in 2009, when it was $5,719.

And as consumers pared back debt on their credit card, the rate of total delinquency dropped slightly in the second quarter, by 0.92 percent. However, that was a decline of 17.1 percent over the first quarter, and 21.3 percent from the same period a year ago.

Credit card spending in general also declined in the second quarter, and given these numbers, it seems more consumers put the money they would have spent towards paying down their total debt.