How the New National Debt Number Will Hurt Your Finances

How the New National Debt Number Will Hurt Your Finances

Peter Reagan

As of Nov. 21, the U.S. national debt broke $36 trillion. It took over 200 years to hit $1 trillion – then just 40 years to shatter $36 trillion. That’s much more than just a massive number. It’s an obligation – and it matters even more than you might think…

The national debt just passed $36 trillion. Trillion.

That is a massive amount of money. Simply mind boggling.

It’s important for you to understand the most likely reason the federal government isn’t especially worried about the debt – and, more importantly, why you should be. 

But first, you have to understand just how much $36 trillion really is.

There are still people out there who act like, and may even say, that the national debt is no big deal. After all, the country is still running, right?

At face value, that seems like a good question to ask. Really, though, it is the type of short-sighted thinking that has our economy in the mess that it is, now, as I’ll explain further down.

Before I do that, though, let’s look at what is really going on with the national debt because there’s a good chance that you may not understand what we’re really looking at in terms of numbers.

So, to start, the national debt is $36 trillion.

To be specific, the exact figure as I’m typing is $36,034,994,586,981.97 (so, it’s higher, now – you can see the latest here). That’s a big number.

And it’s been growing fast. How fast, you ask? Eric Revell at Fox Business writes,

The $36 trillion debt milestone comes just months after the U.S. eclipsed the $35 trillion mark in late July 2024. The national debt has passed other trillion-dollar milestones in the past year, as the $34 trillion mark was reached in early January 2024 and the $33 trillion threshold in September 2023.

You read that right. The national debt increased by nine percent (three trillion dollars) in the last 14 months. That rate would have the already enormous national debt doublingwithin 13 years.

Imagine if what you owed on your home mortgage doubled within 13 years because you kept borrowing on it and never paying it back.

You’d be in major financial trouble well before you go to the 30 year mark on the average mortgage.

Of course, you can’t do that with your mortgage, but the Federal Reserve enables the Federal government with its crazy spending sprees as if it were someone enabling an alcoholic by buying them more liquor.

To give even more perspective on the debt, though, Revell continues:

By comparison, the national debt hovered around $907 billion just four decades ago.

That’s right, within our lifetimes, the national debt increased by 3,869%.

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