{"id":9923,"date":"2015-07-10T18:19:13","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T23:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9923"},"modified":"2015-07-10T18:19:13","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T23:19:13","slug":"canadian-households-are-racking-up-more-debt-poll-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9923","title":{"rendered":"Canadian households are racking up more debt, poll suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Canadian households are racking up more debt, poll suggests<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

Average Canadian household owes $92,699, BMO poll suggests<\/strong><\/p>\n

A new poll suggests Canadian households are piling on more debt and plan to borrow more in the short term, even though a slight rise in interest rates would “stress” most of them out.<\/p>\n

In BMO’s Annual Debt Report, the average household debt of those surveyed is $92,699, more than $4,000 higher than the four-year average dating back to 2012. And servicing that debt, which includes mortgages, lines of credit and credit card debt,\u00a0is costing $1,165 a month.<\/p>\n

Nearly half (46 per cent) feel some stress about those\u00a0figures, but they’re still not as stressed as those surveyed in the past two previous years, suggesting many don’t anticipate a rise in interest rates.<\/p>\n

Two-thirds admit, though, they would feel stressed if interest rates rose by two percentage points.<\/p>\n

“The sizeable number of indebted households that would feel very strained by a relatively moderate increase in interest rates is concerning,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist of BMO Capital Markets. “This is a worrisome side effect of a prolonged period of low interest rates and needs to be closely monitored, especially if rates continue to fall.”<\/p>\n

Canadians carrying debt will be watching the Bank of Canada’s next interest rate announcement July 15. Economists remain split over whether the Bank will hold or cut rates. A rate hike appears off the table \u2014 for now.<\/p>\n

Statistics Canada says the\u00a0debt-to-income ratio of Canadian households stands at 163.3 per cent<\/a>. That means\u00a0for every dollar Canadians earn, they owe $1.63 in debt, which is just barely lower than the record level measured last year.<\/p>\n

BMO’s new poll finds many Canadians \u2014 46 per cent in this case\u00a0\u2014\u00a0are optimistic they can still have all of their debt paid off\u00a0in less than five years.<\/p>\n

The survey was conducted by Pollara and is based on interviews with an online sample of 1,001 Canadians conducted between June 19 and June 22.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian households are racking up more debt, poll suggests Average Canadian household owes $92,699, BMO poll suggests A new poll suggests Canadian households are piling on more debt and plan to borrow more in the short term, even though a slight rise in interest rates would “stress” most of them out. In BMO’s Annual Debt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[942,2985,103,7189,3544,3000,195,7190,1936,7191],"class_list":["post-9923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bank-of-canada","tag-bmo","tag-canada","tag-canadian-household-debt","tag-cbc","tag-cbc-news","tag-debt","tag-debt-to-income-ratio","tag-statistics-canada","tag-survey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9924,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923\/revisions\/9924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}