lawmakers will continue to work on president tom's executive nominations including allowing u.s. ambassador to the united nations, kelly kraft, to upset the u.s. at the upcoming un general assembly print senators will vote at 5:30 p.m. to advance her nomination. watch live coverage of the u.s. senate right here on c-span2. later today president trump will hold a campaign rally fayetteville, north carolina on the eve of a special election for the ninth congressional district in that state. watch like garbage day at 7:00 p.m. eastern here on these been to, online honesty spent at work or listen live with a brief c-span radio app. be with us tomorrow in the house judiciary reconvenes to consider violence prevention bills. watch it live at 2:00 p.m. eastern on our complainant network, c-span3. >> every monday at this time we go ahead and do our your money segment. today looking at the topic of consumer credit card debt with matt scholz, compare cars .com serves as the chief industry analyst with good morning.

>> thank you for having me. >> tell us about theis organization and how you are funded? >> we are owned by lending tree and a credit card market place where people can come in and get credit cards but also learn how to use them wisely what to know when you are shopping for one. basically we get a bounty every time someone signs up for a car through our site with relationships so we also have a church and state divide in our newsroom like any newspaper and my goal is to be the person who goes out and tells the truth and helps people make smart decisions about cars. >> when it comes to the overall topic of consumer debt how is the residents of the united states doing generally on that front particularly when it comes to credit card debt? >> they are still handling their business pretty well right now. delinquencies are climbing up a little bit right now but there is stillit generally low historically but there are

definitely signs that we are starting to run into issues but that is to be expected. it's a trillion dollars in credit card debt and eventually people will have a hard time with that and we started to see some signs the people are becoming less and less confident about their ability to pay. >> signs such as what? >> we do pulling every month asking people how confident they are and being able to pay their statements balance in full this month and how often they've paid in full in the last six months and how often they expect to do it in the next six months. what we have seen is basically all of those numbers are at the lowest base been in the year we been doing this. the really troubling aspect of it is there is a gender gap beside the grand canyon here where women are three times more likely to say that they've never

paid their bill in full in the past six monthss, a single time and to say that they are not at all confident in being able to pay their bills and pull in that stuff. >> just to go to the numbers we show the audience being 40% and very competent to pay monthly statements and 30% city pay the monthly statement balance in full in the past six months 21% to said they never once paid monthly statements balance involved in the last six months but let's start with those three. usaid collectively this shows concerns and could it be a possible bubble situation as it applies to the situation conne connect. >> i don't know it will be a bubble but i think it will be an interesting transition of the next little while but so much recession talk. the thing that i personally believe is americans financial margin for error is so small that even though delinquencies are pretty low now it will not take all that much to have

people go from feeling okay about things to being in some pretty scary situations. >> talk about the comparisons you made between what's happening now concerning those numbers will result inei 2008 wn we were at the height of the financial crisis. >> well, that was such a crazy time with delicacies spiked so high and banks were cutting off accounts because they docc not want to take risk all that after everything fell apart. we are not there yet and it's probably going to take some sort of external trigger like we saw in 2008 with the housing bubble in order to really send things over the edge. honestly, we don't know how high credit card debt can go without really causing issues because that piece that we saw in 2008

was stopped cold by other economic issues. >> our guest with us until 9:30 and if you want too ask questions concerning the research he does a consumer credit card debt call us atnc (202)748-8000 and (202)748-800 (202)748-8001 and you can tweet us at c-span wj. final line of the report taking a look at women and in paying off their credit card debt, expand on that, why is that happening? >> there's been an awful lot written about the wage gap and women at so many rings stacked against them financially, not the leastd of which is the wage gap and also the likelihood of being the head of single-family household. there's a whole lot of things that make things difficult for women in this particular space. in the year we been doing this tracking this competence we have seen a gender gap being

completely obvious in the numbers that we've done. generally and all the surveys we do there can be pretty good amount of difference between men and women and what we don't want is for that gap to expand. we obviously wanted to go the other way and will be interesting to see when in economic downturns does come how that looks? >> how does that number compared to men who responded to the same questions? >> men are much more confident when it comes to being able to pay their bills and much more likely to have said they have paid their bills in full. for example, about 30% of men said they were confident in their ability to pay their bills but only about 10% of women said that. i think that's right. yes. lots of numbers in my head. >> that's okay. couple other numbers to show you but you talked about those

concerns that you had taking a look at those numbers and you put out a report on their own and tell you what they said but they said by the end of 2018 that total balance is when it comes to credit card about 900 billion well above the recession because 792 billion cardholders were using prime and subprime credit scores accounted for most of those for the card debt spending in the rates that delink with the decline sharply during the peak of the recession. >> yeah, what's interesting is that independent in the past few years when we had seen thingsng really good and the credit card space people were spending and going crazy with it but we saw an expansion into the i subprime space. what we are seeing now is the growth in delinquencies we have seen is in that the prime space which should not be surprising but just accepting this cycle that credit cards get inn.

it's not just credit card but more the whole thing but that is ishow it ends up going. what we've seen in the past year oro two is a little bit of a tightening when it comes to lending standards and banks to lend tolikely those subprime folks because they are girding themselves and managing risk or whenever any downturn may come. >> who is filling the gap is approaching those in that prime or subprime area and whose meeting their needse. >> there are always people who will go after that and the personal no space has been interesting where it's not even necessarily banks but it can be banks but sometimes it's tech companies or that sort of thing for offering personal loans to people to get started with credit or to help rebuild their credit and we have seen signs in the credit card space that people are using those personal

loans in the way that people use to use balance transfer credit cards so a lot of that credit card debt people are trying to consolidate to manage is now appearing in the personal loan space and maybe making it to where it looks like there is less credit card debt than there actually is because it's moved somewhere else. >> this is matt scholz, chief industry analyst in our first call comes from you from maryland with helen. good morning. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i am glad to knowec the subjects out in front of me. i've been talking to one m of my credit card providers and trying to get them to stop doing some of the predatory things they are doing. i have a 745 credit rating and have a low amount on my credit

card a i will pay like 150 or maybe $50 or $75 more each month and then they changed me from a 12% interest rate to 827% interest rate. i went from that so i started paying $200 a month. they starta over turley setting me at $200 a month and so for the last three payments are made i made $200 for three payments and that me $600 but they charge me $147 in interest rates. i don't know how to get ahead of them other thann trying to pay t off? i am at a fixed income and they are eating up my income. mylities are eating up income. credit cards are not our only debt but we have our utilities and mortgages in medical bills. these things are playing

together all at one time. >> host: helen, thank you for the culprit will let our guest respond. >> guest: yes, credit card debt is a big problem for many many people in this country. no question. generally speaking when it comes to what people are being charged to what they have to pay in terms of minimum payments generally there are formulas that are involved that help to regulate based on how much of a balance you have. that number moves with the balance you have but should not move on a month-to-month basis if your balance has not moved that much. there are restrictions as to how quickly the bank can change your interest rate without something having happened because regulations that we saw in 2 202008, 2009 basically make it to where in most situations the

banks have to give you 45 days notice if they are going to increase your interest rates. if something like that happened more quickly or you weren't notified that's a whole other issue but generally speaking those things should not change that much to that direction so i'm not sure what the case may be there. >> we have a viewer off a twitter that says overall interest rates are going down llyet car rates stayed the same. >> guest: yeah, it's been interesting. most of the movement and credit card rates over the last few years have been driven by the fed. 90% or so of credit cards in this country are called variable-rate cars so tied to the prime rate and move when the fed moves rates. for years the fed is raising rates but before that it was interesting that after the great

recession after banks slashed a bunch of credit lines in the credit card act 2009 came around there was a whole lot of movement and even a card that charged 76% apr for a little while and then everything got volatile for a short time and then flattened out for a few years and was pretty stable until the feds started to raise rates. now what we see is that according to our latest report that we did last month the average credit card apr is about 20-point 9% and the average new credit card offer has comes with a range of apr's basically about 70% to about. depending on your credit worthiness you make a big difference to what that rate is. >> powder springs, tennessee, this is lindsay. hello. ld caller: i just have a couple of small questions if i could. first one is how to switch to a

different card and cancel one without hurting your credit score? the other is i have a visa card and i have tried for a few months to pay it off and i paid it off a couple of times and then i keep getting this bill so when i called my bill is due on the 12th of each month but they did not have the interest from that bill until the 15th so i kept getting a bill for the interest and it was a never-ending thing. i had to pay in more than my bill was so i would have a negative balance so ih still gt a bill everyt' month but it says negative i don't have to send in a payments. my question is i know the answer but so they can keep the on a continuous billing thing. if you could tell about that i

would appreciate it. >> guest: starting with that, there can be times wherere there is residual interest after you close the credit card and really the best thing to do is to call the 800 number on the back of your credit card and say i'm closing it and ask them about any other interest that will be accrued on this account. they should be able to give you that final closeout number that you should be able to wrap up the cart and not t have to worry about it anymore. that said, generally for your credit score the best move is to take that credit card and maybe cut it up or stick it in your desk and people who have put it in ice and throw it in the freezer so they can't use it or stuff like that but generally the best thing for you to do is to keep that credit card open because it impacts something called credit utilization which

is basically how much debt you have compared to how much available credit you have so if you have because of dollars in debt and $10000 in available credit or utilization rate is 30% but if you knock that down to $5000 in available credit all of a sudden your utilization rate is 60% and that will hurt your credit score. credit utilization is the second most important aspect of your credit score behind your payment history so really a good thing to do would be to keep that card and maybe put a reoccurring small subscription charge, maybe netflix or spotify or some particular description that you do, have that auto pay and set up that billing to where if there is active and will not

miss payments and it's doing the work for you and preserving your credit. >> on another front: down off of twitter asks how well to those debt relief companies work. adding that she doesn't know anyone that use it personally generally speaking if something being offered up sounds too good to be true. it probably is. there's a whole lot of that in the debt relief space and credit repair space. it's important for people to understand that if debt gets forgiven and you don't pay the full amount that you owed it to somebody it will shoot your credit in a pretty significant weight. the other thing that a lot of people don't know when it comes to forgiven debt is that that forgiven debt is viewed as income by the irs and a lot of people think they are done with that debt and then they get

themselves a bill from the irs and is an eye-opener. >> host: from california in san jose, renee is next. >> caller: good morning. can you hear me? thank you for taking my call. i'm glad this topic is on the air. i have ave question about digitl credit lines and okay, for example, i finally got it established through a secure credit card and every thing was great and got larger amounts in my bank think was going great. i'm very responsible with my debt. i have a health situation that no insurance covers. you have to pay up front to have it and its my surgery was irreversible and if i did not get done i'd lose the function of my job completely. so, i needed to have a significant lot of money and their deferred interest is the .9% if you paid off in a year so

i want to know how is this healthcare -- has this changed the format of credit cards and what is the digital aspect of a credit card being digital because they gave me a choice to do it paper or digitally and i just can't remember well, for one thing it's overwhelming and my mom has alzheimer's which is not covered by health insurance so this is the problem i'm having. the female is in charge of my mother's primary caregiver the power of attorney and my ownhe health situations and the debt with credit cards i don't understand how my credit is down to five something now because of pride to pay off my care credit. how does that play into it? what do i need to know about this? >> caller: healthcare. >> guest: healthcare is an enormous issue. personally i have had health

issues in my family that have opened my eyes to the cost and it's crazy. the truth is most americans unless you are lebron james or something super wealthy is really one medical emergency away from being it in pretty significant financial trouble. it's really scary. but basically a lot of people are struggling with that sort of thing and ideally credit card cards -- credit cards are tough because in that situation because the interest rates are so high a lot of times those medical bills are astronomical. and they're bigger than anyone credit limit would be so it can make it a challenging thing. there are things like care credit which i'm not extremely familiar with but i know there are services out there and i

know there are personal loads of things you can take to help out with that sort of thing as well as goodwill programs that some of the pharmaceutical companies offer up for people who are on fixed incomes and had experience with that with my own family. but then when it comes to the digital aspect of the credit card we will see that a lot more. their apple card was the first big example off a well-known big brand card that came out and said we areat a digital card fit and we will give you the physical card but we want you to use it through our iphone or online, that sort of thing. all of that is coming but ultimately the things to note is that it's just credit whether you are using it to your phone or through online and through a plastic card or titanium card or

whatever the case may be but it's still just credit and all the rules of making those payments and how the usage apply. >> this is robert in baltimore, maryland, hello. >> caller: before i ask my question can you confirm that i thank you said that only 10% of women who report been able to pay their bills and only 30% of men, is that right? >> guest: it was getting at the confidence that people have in the number of women who are confident in their ability to pay their bills in the fall, credit card bills in full this month is in the single digits and men is about three times higher. it's a big deal. >> caller: got it. i think that single factoid describes the state of the

economy for people on the street but they are better than complex economic results that politicians selectively cherry pick findings there is no single metric for more security and we can dwell on our numbers coming from income which i think valueless or probably makes more sense but not of it makes a lot of sense given that cost especially healthcare costs and expenses radically change the playing field in terms of security for individuals. that particular statistic is more valuable than many i've heard and i would like to

suggest that you are uniquely positioned from your way in and the state of economy from the people on the street better than any economists or politician is presenting it in any other way to do that. >> guest: that was very nice of you. that was my hope when we started doing this pulling because frankly, my whole view of the state and fragility of people's personal finances took a shift with a government shutdown happened because what we saw was it lasted 30 days, 40 days or whatever it was but the amount of people, people who made good incomes and people who pay their bills regularly who missed a month of pay and found themselves in the cold, really scary situations seemed to me like it's proof positive that most americans potential margin for error is really small and

again like we said earlier on in the show i just don't think it's going to take all that much for americans who are doing fairly good jobs now of paying their bills consistently to be in some real trouble. hopefully, that stays further away but i'm afraid it's not going to spend what you mentioned the credit card act of 2009. talk about what is purpose was and what hasas it accomplished? >> guest: it has compassed a lot. the intent was essentially to come inin and to help protect consumers against unfair and even potentially deceptive practices that were out there. it was one of the biggest centerpieces of president obama's early years one of the first things that he did. what it did was it made lots and

lots of changes. among them were the fact thatt t regulated where your payment was applied, for example, after the minimum payment any amountt you paid to your credit card had to go to the highest interest portion of your balance first. that is a significant thing because those speculations can be manipulated pretty quickly and pretty easy to pretty make some substantial issues for people. it also got rid of it's called universal default where if you miss a payment on one credit card all the other credit card issuers can check up your rates pretty quick but another thing it did was make it harder for banks to do their work on college campuses and changed the

ability for folks under 21 to get a credit card because when i was in college i dorm room mailbox was overrun with credit card offers that now in order for someone under 21 to get a credit card you need to showw proof of income or get a cosigner and that has changed the game a little bit. a bunch of other things that it did but those are a few of the big ones. >> banks find a way to work around those. >> yeah, they definitely have. it was a really volatile time because it did hit them in the bottom line and they had to scramble and to see exactly how they could generate -- >> we leave this conversation here you can see the rest of it at c-span .org. type credit card debt in the video search box.