Debt by Age Calculator
Enter everything you owe and your age to see where that total falls among U.S. families in the same age band — your percentile, the median for your group, and how many families that age owe nothing.
How do you compare?
Everything you owe: mortgage, home-equity borrowing, student loans, car loans, credit cards and any other balances.
Compared against U.S. families in the same age band.
You owe more than 45% of U.S. families aged 35 to 44, counting the 12.7% who owe nothing.
- Median for your age
- $97,659
- Owe no debt at all
- 12.7%
- Highest 10% owe over
- $411,000
A high rank here means a large balance, not a bad one — most debt in this survey is mortgage debt, and families aged 35 to 44 sit in the middle half of the range between $10,300 and $243,800. Figures are Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances 2022 data.
How the percentile is calculated
Your total debt is placed on the distribution of debt held by U.S. families in your age band, and the result is the share of that band owing strictly less than you. Age bands follow the Federal Reserve’s own brackets: under 35, 35–44, 45–54, 55–64, 65–74, and 75 or older.
The distribution was computed directly from the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances Summary Extract Public Data by pooling all five multiple-imputation implicates at a fifth of the survey weight and taking weighted percentiles of the variable DEBT, which totals mortgages and home-equity borrowing, other residential debt, credit-card balances, instalment loans including student and vehicle debt, and other debts.
Percentile = weighted share of your age band owing less- Age band
- The SCF bracket your age falls in
- Weighted
- Using the survey weights, so the sample represents all U.S. families
- Owing less
- Strictly less than your total, counting the debt-free
The same pipeline reproduces figures the Federal Reserve has already published: a 66.1% homeownership rate, matching the published rate exactly, and a median family net worth of $192,700 against the $192,900 published. That agreement is what makes the rest of the curve usable. On the same extract, 77.4% of families carry some debt.
A high rank is a big balance, not a verdict
Most of the debt in this survey is mortgage debt. A family that bought a house last year can sit near the top of its age band while owning a substantial asset, and a family that owns outright sits at the bottom while being much older. The percentile describes the size of a balance and nothing else.
Debt totals also fall with age in this data: nearly half of families 75 or older owe nothing at all, against roughly one in eight of families aged 35 to 44. Comparing across age bands would mostly measure the life cycle, which is why the comparison is always within a band.
For whether a balance is affordable rather than merely typical, the ratio that lenders actually use is debt to income.
What this calculator assumes
- Figures are 2022 dollars from the 2022 survey wave. These tables change when a person updates them, never on a date.
- The comparison is by age band only — not by income, region, household size, or what the borrowing bought.
- The survey unit is the family, so a couple’s combined balances are the like-for-like input.
- Debt is measured gross. Assets bought with the debt, including the house behind a mortgage, are not netted off here — see the net worth percentile for the netted view.
- Percentiles are read from a 21-point grid of the real distribution, within 1.8 percentile points of the full microdata at worst.
Debt by age FAQ
How much debt is normal for my age?
There is no normal amount, only a distribution — and it is a wide one. This page shows where your total sits within it, including how many families your age owe nothing at all.
Does a high percentile mean I am in trouble?
Not on its own. Most debt here is mortgage debt, so the ranking largely tracks who has recently bought property. Affordability depends on the income servicing the balance and the assets behind it, neither of which a percentile can see.
Should I include my mortgage?
Yes. The survey total includes mortgages and home-equity borrowing, so leaving yours out would compare your consumer debt against other families’ entire balance sheet.
Why do the oldest age bands owe so little?
Mortgages get paid off and student loans are long behind. Around 46.6% of families 75 or older report no debt of any kind in the 2022 survey, which pulls the median for that band close to zero.
Other ways to see where you stand
- Net worth percentile — assets minus debts, against families your age.
- Income percentile — where your earnings rank in your age group.
- Retirement savings by age — the asset side, from the same survey.
- Savings rate percentile — how much of your income you keep.
Sources and review notes
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022 Summary Extract Public Data (variable DEBT, weighted by WGT across five implicates)
- Federal Reserve Bulletin — “Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances”
- Federal Reserve — Survey of Consumer Finances documentation and codebook
Distribution tables computed from the 2022SCF public summary extract and checked against the Federal Reserve’s published shares and medians before release. The percentile lookup is covered by deterministic unit tests against exact weighted answers from the microdata. No financial professional review is claimed yet.