Between their credit card balances, mortgages, auto loans, home equity lines of credit and student debt, Americans owe a record $18.2 trillion, according to a new quarterly report on household debt from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Still, for the most part, borrowers are managing that debt relatively well — with one exception.

“Transition rates into serious delinquency have leveled off for credit card and auto loans over the past year,” Daniel Mangrum, research economist at the New York Fed, said in a statement. “However, the first batch of past due student loans were reported in the first quarter of 2025, resulting in a large jump in seriously delinquent borrowers.”

The delinquency rate for student loan balances spiked after a nearly five-year pause due to the pandemic, the New York Fed found. Nearly 8% of total student debt was reported as 90 days past due in the first quarter of 2025, compared to less than 1% a year earlier.

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Although the student loan delinquency rate is “likely to go up a little bit more,” it is “still comparable to what it was in 2020,” the New York Fed researchers said on a press call Tuesday.

However, in a blog post, the researchers noted that “the ramifications of student loan delinquency are severe.”

Currently, around 42 million Americans hold federal student loans and roughly 5.3 million borrowers are in default, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Another 4 million borrowers are in “late-stage delinquency,” or over 90 days past due on payments.

Among borrowers who are now required to make payments — not including those who are in deferment or forbearance or are currently enrolled in school — nearly one in four student loan borrowers are behind in their payments, the New York Fed found.  

“For many, this had grave consequences for their credit standing,” the New York Fed researchers said.

The Education Department restarted collection efforts on defaulted student loans on May 5, which includes the garnishment of wages, tax returns and Social Security payments.

Until last week, the Education Department had not collected on defaulted student loans since March 2020. After the Covid pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments expired in September 2023, the Biden administration offered borrowers another year in which they would be shielded from the impacts of missed payments. That on-ramp officially ended on Sept. 30, 2024 and delinquencies began appearing on credit reports in the first quarter of 2025.

Both VantageScore and FICO reported a drop in average scores starting in February as early- and late-stage credit delinquencies rose sharply, driven by the resumption of student loan reporting.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York also cautioned in a March report that student loan borrowers who are late on their payments could see their credit scores sink by as much as 171 points as collection activity resumes. 

A separate analysis by TransUnion found that consumers who faced default in recent months have seen their credit scores fall by 63 points, on average. For super prime borrowers — or those with credit scores above 780 — who were seriously delinquent, scores sank as much as 175 points. Credit scores typically range between 300 and 850.

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The Federal Trade Commission’s new guidelines on price transparency — known as the junk fees rule —will change how ticket prices are presented, which is a rare victory for consumers, experts say.

According to the FTC, businesses selling live-event tickets or short-term lodging must prominently show the total cost upfront, including “all charges or fees the business knows about and can calculate,” before asking for payment. They must also “avoid vague phrases like ‘convenience fees,’ ‘service fees,’ or ‘processing fees'” and “conspicuously disclose the amount and purpose of those charges,” the FTC explained.

“More transparency is always a win for consumers,” said Andrew Mall, an associate professor of music at Northeastern University. However, “if there are any consumers who have been expecting fewer fees as a result, they will be disappointed,” he added.

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Consumers have grown increasingly frustrated with ticket sellers in recent years, especially as a number of blockbuster tours tested the limits of what concert goers were willing to pay.

“Concert ticket pricing is a very elastic economic model,” Mall said, “there is no limit.”

Post-pandemic, ticket prices soared, also known as “funflation.”

The prevalence of tacking on “junk fees” as well as implementing “dynamic pricing,” which is when ticket-selling platforms charge more per ticket depending on demand at any given time, caused costs to escalate even more, often unexpectedly. Neither of these strategies are prohibited under the FTC’s new rule.

“This is not about capping fees or saying what fees companies can or cannot charge,” said Teresa Murray, director of the consumer watchdog office for U.S. PIRG, a nonprofit consumer advocacy research group.

“It’s about transparency and it’s about making things fair, not just for consumers but also for other businesses,” she added.

The rule is narrower than what the FTC proposed in 2023. That rule would have broadly banned hidden charges as part of former President Joe Biden’s wide-ranging crackdown on junk fees that drive up costs without providing visible benefits.

Ticket sellers can continue to charge whatever they want for concerts, sporting events, music, theater and other live performances, Murray said. “They just have to give the total price upfront.”

Ticketmaster on Monday launched “All In Prices” in the U.S., which now shows the full price of tickets, including all fees before taxes and shipping charges.

“Ticketmaster has long advocated for all-in pricing to become the nationwide standard so fans can easily compare prices across all ticketing sites, and we commend the FTC for making that a reality,” Ticketmaster COO Michael Wichser said in a statement. “Paired with the recent executive order targeting abuse in the secondary market, it marks a meaningful step forward for our industry and we’ll continue pushing for additional reforms that protect both artists and fans.”

Secondary-market seller SeatGeek also announced in a press release Monday it will now display the price of tickets with fees included upfront on its platform, in line with the FTC’s new guidelines.

“Fans deserve pricing that’s clear from the start,” Jack Groetzinger, SeatGeek’s co-founder and CEO, said in the release. “This is an important step forward.”

There may also be a knock-on effect to come, Murray said.

“In the secondary market, where there is a lot of competition, maybe those companies will shave off a few of those fees so they appear to be the lowest cost,” she said. “We wouldn’t be surprised if some fees went away.”

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Inflation retreated again in April on the back of lower prices for consumer staples like groceries and gasoline, and other items such as used cars and clothing.

The consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, rose 2.3% in April from 12 months earlier, down from 2.4% in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.

It was the smallest annual increase since February 2021, just before pandemic-era inflation started to pop.

However, economists warn it’s not a matter of if, but when, tariffs levied by President Donald Trump start to re-ignite inflation, at a time at a time when it has nearly been tamed from pandemic-era highs.

“It felt like we could just about declare victory on putting inflation back in the bottle, and it’s back out again,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.

He expects tariffs to start noticeably impacting inflation in the May CPI report issued next month.

“Soak this report in,” Zandi said. “It’ll be a while before we get another good one.”

Tariff policies currently in effect would cost the average U.S. household an extra $2,800 over the “short run,” according to a Yale Budget Lab report issued Monday. (It doesn’t specify a time frame.)

The speed at which companies raise prices will vary, economists said.

Some may not want to raise them immediately, to avoid alienating consumers. Others may have ample inventory, and can avoid raising prices until their non-tariffed inventory runs low. Some may try to raise prices prematurely, in anticipation of higher costs.

A 10% average tariff rate would add as much as 1 percentage point to the consumer price index after about six to nine months, said Joseph Gagnon, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

That average rate is a “reasonable” guess, given current policy, he said.

Currently, there’s a 10% baseline tariff on most U.S. trading partners, and a higher rate on China of at least 30%. There are also 25% duties on specific products like steel, aluminum and some automobiles and auto parts, and on certain goods from Canada and Mexico.

Of course, it’s unclear where policy will ultimately land.

Even after a temporary trade deal with China announced Monday, “core” CPI inflation will still rise to 3.5% by the end of 2025, Stephen Brown, deputy chief North America economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note Tuesday.

Core inflation — which strips out energy and food prices, which can be volatile categories — was at 2.8% in April.

“I think tariffs are the biggest question mark over the inflation outlook,” said Sarah House, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Economics.

“There’s all this tremendous trade uncertainty and we have higher tariffs pretty much across everything we import,” she added.

Gasoline prices have fallen (or, deflated) in recent months alongside those of oil, from which gasoline is refined. Oil prices have declined amid fear of recession, which would mean lower demand for oil, and greater supply.

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Grocery prices also declined for the month, by 0.4%. Lower fuel costs can translate to reduced costs for transportation of food from farm to store shelves, economists said. A “sharp” monthly fall in egg prices — a 13% decline — also contributed, Brown wrote.

Prices for used cars and trucks also declined, by 0.5% for the month, as did those for apparel (-0.2%) and airline fares (-2.8%).

Inflation for housing, the largest CPI component, has also tamed though remains elevated, at 4% annually.

Broadly, CPI inflation for “services” has gradually declined due to a combination of housing; a weaker labor market in which workers aren’t quitting their jobs as frequently and businesses don’t have to raise wages rapidly; and a lagged effect of “calmer” goods inflation, House said.