How Americans really feel about credit card debt
By Walecia Konrad • Bankrate.com

An awful lot of Americans feel lousy about the way they're handling credit card debt, say the results of a Bankrate commissioned survey.

Do you worry about how you'll pay credit card bills every month? Source: Bankrate.com 2007

Twenty-five percent worry about how they are going to pay their credit card bills each month and 28 percent feel guilty about how much money they are putting on their cards.

"There's an awful lot of emotion involved when it comes to credit card debt," says Robert Manning, director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services at the Rochester Institute of Technology, "and, a lot of it is negative.

"If the poll had only surveyed people who carry a balance on their credit cards, I'm positive you'd find that those percentages would be much higher," he says.

Do you sometimes feel guilty about how much money you put on your cards each month? Source: Bankrate.com 2007

Susan Keating, president and CEO of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling goes one step further. After looking over the Bankrate poll results, Keating wonders whether Americans are being honest with themselves. "As the old saying goes, 'the first and most important step is admitting you have a problem' and it seems like when it comes to debt consumers are still living in denial."

Doing OK with credit cards
But there were some bright spots in our survey of 1,014 adults conducted for Bankrate by GfK, Roper Public Affairs and Media. Eight out of 10 people surveyed said they have not reached the credit limit on any of their credit cards. And, more than half of the people with credit cards say they pay their balances in full each month.