Americans concentrate more on credit card debt than home loans

The number of consumers who are current in paying down their credit card debt but 30 days or more behind on home loan payments rose to 7.4 percent in the third quarter of last year, according to a new study from the credit monitoring bureau TransUnion. That's up from 4.3 percent in the first quarter of 2008, before the financial crisis really took hold.

Ezra Becker, vice president of research and consulting in TransUnion's financial services business unit, noted that this trend is likely the result of continued depreciation of home values, indicating consumers' inability or unwillingness to pay their mortgage bills, because credit card debt is often easier to handle.

Consumers' efforts to reduce their credit card debt has led to fewer instances of both delinquency and default for the nation's largest lenders over the last several quarters, though some say this is the result of prior charge offs rather than more conscientious bill payment.