The other day, one of the pop-up ads on my computer was for printer ink. That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that the ad offered financing for ink. That’s right. Financing to buy computer printing ink.

Both political parties rail about government debt, if in different terms, and with different objectives in mind, but the debt that concerns most Americans isn’t government debt, but personal debt.

Since most people’s incomes aren’t keeping up with inflation, they’re either buying less or going into debt, but statistics suggest more are going into debt.

Data from the Urban Institute found that a cumulative 32% increase in food costs over the last five years has pushed more than one in four working-age Americans into credit card debt just to cover their regular grocery bills.

Eighty-four percent of new car purchases are either financed or leased, and the average new car payment is now over $800 a month. The average used car payment is something like $525 a month. The national average rent reached about $1,302 in 2024—a 31% jump over five years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from September 2025 to September 2026, prices for gasoline increased 34.2%. Over the same period, prices for fuel oil rose 74.2% percent, a huge increase for the more than four million households using it for home heating.

Total personal debt for Americans has increased by 33% since the beginning of 2020, and total consumer credit for Americans now exceeds $5 trillion, not including mortgages. Three in four American families carry significant debt loads, and Americans owe nearly $1.37 trillion in credit card and other revolving debt, according to new Federal Reserve figures released Friday, November 6th. Roughly forty percent of Americans cannot afford an emergency expense of $400 without borrowing or doing without something else, if not both.

All of that just might explain why the recent election results turned out as they did… and also why some computer ink suppliers now offer financing.