In Texas, everything is bigger including their credit card debts. This is as per the new ranking released by Experian that clearly shows that Texas is the state with the highest debt in the United States. San Antonio has topped the list with an average card debt of a whopping $5,177 which is 20.9% above the national average. The debts levels have remained steady since 2007 in San Antonio despite an 8% drop in debt levels all over the nation.

The average person here owed over $4,200 on the credit card by the end of 2010. This could be due to poor financial planning or because of a holiday hangover. This figure could attain alarming proportions if you do the calculations. For instance, if you put the annual interest rate at 14.73% then it would easily take about 8 years to clear off the balances and that is if you don’t incur any additional charges and pay off only the minimum amount each month. And in that 8-year period you would have paid $1,343 by way of interest charges.

Vice President, Experian, Maxine Sweet stated that these are the kind of statistics that get the attention of people. She also went on to say that they want consumers to understand the long-term implications of poor financial planning.

Experian has also found that consumers are cutting down on their credit card usage. This is largely due to the tighter lending criteria and the number of cards per individual has shrunk by almost 23%.