I looked at the Federal Reserve Board's most recent consumer credit release, and it doesn't indicate indebted Americans are successfully reducing their burdens.

Average American, in November 2007, bought a car at 95% loan-to-value, for a term a little over 60 months, at a cost (including taxes, I surmise) of $29419, at an APR of 4.2%. I guess somebody has to: where else are the frugal going to get used cars?

What are scary are the consumer credit amounts outstanding from commercial banks, financial companies, and credit unions, especially tracked from 2002.

For laffs, I looked at the County Records for liens and Notice of Trustee Sales over the three-month period 11/1/200x - 1/31/200x+1 for the last eight years. My county has hit a peak of 3959 liens, and 1090 Notices of Trustee Sales (NoTS). The record prior to that was in 2004, with 3815 liens and 1035 NoTS. 2002 had 4097 liens. Liens have, with the freak exception of 2005, numbered over 3600.

I don't feel so bad now about sluggishly paying down my mortgage. The spouse had a false notion we were aggressively paying it down now that we were out of childcare obligations. I should probably share this blog's url with him to let him know where the money is earmarked. I do want to pay a little more, but that depends on my hormonal level, our liquid assets, and my confidence about the sufficiency of our retirement contributions.

I'm waiting until April 16 to open a money market account. I don't yet know how much extra I'll owe for taxes, but am hoping the extra is under $6K. I don't want to open a money market account now and find that I have to close it eleven weeks later.