US average holiday debt jumps to $1,550 - an 8-year high

Retail data analytics company Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks multiple payment methods, found that holiday sales rose 7.6 percent — a slower pace than the 8.5 percent increase from a year earlier. Meanwhile, the average American’s holiday debt load jumped 24 percent from last year to $1,550, the highest in eight years, according to a December poll of 2,050 US consumers by Lending Tree.