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Originally Posted by chemgear
^ Maybe, not sure though - I can't seem to find clarity about it on their website. But really, the number excluding mortgage payments is more like $55,000 per adult. $110,000 per couple without kids at least - more depending upon how they count to their "average Canadian" total.
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I think it's pretty clear that it's based only on borrowers, so your numbers don't add up. Lots of people have lines of credit but no auto loans, or a car loan but not a line of credit and so on. I don't have a penny in consumer debt so I wouldn't be counted in their divided up figures, but I would be part of their overall debt figure which is presumably total consumer debt divided by whatever population they consider "consumers". That's why the "average consumer" debt level is much lower than the aggregate amount of the categorized debt. There are lots of people with no debt to speak of who drag down the total numbers.
You can just look at the rough numbers for yourself if you want a better idea. According to Bank of Canada numbers, non mortgage debt is about 40% of total personal debt in Canada. Given that total personal debt in Canada is around $1.6 trillion, that means consumer debt is at about $600 billion. There are about 26-27 million people over the age of 18 in Canada, so divided up per capita amongst adults, that's roughly $23K per person. Obviously those are really rough numbers, but they do demonstrate that the average consumer debt numbers that are reported are relatively accurate. There's no way the average adult in Canada has $55K in non mortgage debt.