When Wanda Simpson reached retirement a couple of years ago, the Cleveland mom had an unwelcome companion: Around $25,000 in debt.
Despite a longtime job as a municipal administrator, Simpson wrestled with a combination of a second mortgage and credit-card bills that she racked up thanks to health problems and a generous tendency to help out family members.
"I was very worried, and there were a lot of sleepless nights," remembers Simpson, 68. "I didn't want to be a burden on my children, or pass away and leave a lot of debt behind."
New data reveal that Wanda Simpson has company - and plenty of it.
Indeed, the percentage of older Americans carrying debt has increased markedly in the past couple of decades. Among families headed by those 55 or older, 65.4 percent are still carrying debt loads, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). That is up more than 10 percentage points from 1992, when only 53.8 percent of such families grappled with debt.
"It's a two-fold story of higher prevalence of debt, and an uptick in those with a very high level of debt," says Craig Copeland, EBRI's senior research associate. "Some people are in real trouble."
To wit, 9.2 percent of families headed by older Americans are forking over at least 40 percent of their income to debt payments. That, too, is up, from 8.5 percent three years earlier.
The only bright spot in the data? The average debt balance of families headed by those over 55 has actually decreased since 2010, according to EBRI, from $80,564 to $73,211 in 2013.
Still sound high? It is especially so for those heading into reduced earning years, or retiring completely.
The primary culprit, according to Copeland: rising home prices and the longer-term mortgages that result, often leaving seniors with a monthly nut well into their golden years.