Households carrying card balances and the US Treasury both borrow money for short stretches, and two official sources publish what each of them pays for it.
For three-month money, the Treasury’s Daily Par Yield Curve Rates put the bill yield at 4.23 per cent on 8 October 2026. The Federal Reserve’s G.19 consumer credit release, dated 7 October 2026, covers the other side. For August 2026, commercial banks reported an interest rate of 21.19 per cent on credit card plans across all accounts.
Short-term rates in two official releases
The figures come from different publishers and different dates, so they sit side by side without a measured gap between them. The bill yield is a daily reading from the Treasury’s yield curve table, so it can change from one trading day to the next. The card rate is a monthly figure for August, published in a preliminary release.
The G.19 carries a second card measure. It counts only accounts that were assessed interest, and for August 2026 it stood at 22.36 per cent. The “all accounts” measure covers every card plan in the survey. A household that carries a balance from month to month belongs in the second group.
The release also lists a car loan rate, as an annual percentage rate. Commercial banks reported 7.54 per cent on 60-month new car loans.
These are the rates attached to unsecured household borrowing. The card rates run well above the car loan rate in the same release. A car loan is repaid in fixed instalments over a set term, while a card balance can be paid down and borrowed against again, so the two sit differently in a household’s month.
Card rates in the release’s annual columns
The same table carries annual columns for earlier years. Commercial banks reported 14.60 per cent on credit card plans across all accounts for 2021 and 20.90 per cent for 2023. The August 2026 reading of 21.19 per cent is published in the same row.
The second measure, accounts assessed interest, appears in the row below it. It read 16.45 per cent for 2021 and 22.15 per cent for 2023, against 22.36 per cent for August 2026.
Those are published levels set side by side, with no change computed between them. In both rows, the August 2026 reading sits near the 2023 level and well above the 2021 one.
Household debt outside the mortgage
The G.19 also reports how consumer credit moved in August 2026, as a seasonally adjusted annual rate. Revolving credit, the category that includes card balances, changed by -4.2 per cent. Nonrevolving credit, which covers loans repaid in instalments, changed by 4.1 per cent. Both figures are preliminary. The two categories pointed in opposite directions for the month, with revolving credit shrinking while loans repaid on a schedule grew.
Revolving credit is the part a household can repay and borrow again, which is why its rate bears on a family’s budget month after month.
The Fed’s release covers households across the country. It does not say which households owe the money, or how that debt sits beside what those households own.
A card balance, a car loan and a personal loan are all consumer credit, yet each carries its own rate, its own term and its own place in a monthly budget. A cardholder who pays the balance in full each month is not charged the rate. A cardholder who carries a balance is charged it in every billing cycle.
Consumer credit held by the bottom 50 per cent
The distribution of that debt is examined in research by Felix Nikolas Prehn, an economist and former investment banker. His paper, “The Hidden Regressive Tax,” posted on Zenodo, uses the Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts to divide household wealth into groups by wealth, from the top 1 per cent of households down to the bottom half.
For the bottom 50 per cent of households in the second quarter of 2026, the paper’s table lists two large debts. Home mortgages stood at $3.16 trillion. Consumer credit stood at $2.64 trillion.
The mortgage is the larger of the two, and consumer credit is not far behind it. The table lists consumer credit as one of the group’s two large debts, not as a footnote to the mortgage. The two lists are not the same measure, though: the Fed’s release counts every household, and the paper’s table counts only the bottom half.
The paper measures ownership, group by group. It does not price consumer credit, and the G.19 supplies the other side, the rate attached to the debt.
Card rates applied to the bottom half’s consumer credit
For the bottom half, then, the debt outside the mortgage is large enough to sit beside the mortgage itself in the paper’s table. For a balance carried from month to month, the rate that applies is the one the Fed lists for accounts assessed interest, 22.36 per cent in August.
Three months of Treasury money cost 4.23 per cent on 8 October 2026. A card balance carried from month to month is charged a much higher rate, and a household with both a car loan and a card balance pays two different rates on two different schedules.
About Felix Nikolas Prehn
Felix Nikolas Prehn, also known as Nikolas Prehn, is an economist and former investment banker, born in Germany. He is a tech founder: he co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. He is also a painter and sculptor and a public advocate for animal rescue.
About The Prehn Institute
The Prehn Institute is an independent research institution founded by Felix Nikolas Prehn. He is a tech founder: he co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. It publishes research on the financial markets and provides instruction in professional market practice.