Many Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt. While the news headlines bring us a steady barrage of stories about McMansions, expensive cars, designers duds and cutting-edge technology, we hear tales of woe from our listeners and viewers who also assumed things would just keep getting better - so they bought whatever they wanted and put it on credit cards.

That's not to say all Americans are cavalier about getting into debt. You're probably not that way, or else you wouldn't be visiting Dolans.com and getting our advice about managing your debt. We also hear from people who were forced into debt because of an emergency, or who financed their business start-up by maxing out their personal credit cards.

But the facts can't be ignored: Middle-class Americans are drowning in debt. A study on consumer bankruptcy conducted at the height of the bull market was the basis for the book The Fragile Middle Class - and foreclosures and bankruptcies continue to climb. In 2006, 789,000 people filed for bankruptcy...we're guessing way more than a million in 2007!

The researchers found that some 90% of the debtors filing for bankruptcy at the threshold of the new millennium were a cross section of middle-class America. More than half were homeowners. Their education was slightly higher than the national average. Job losses, medical problems and divorce accounted for about 80% of the bankruptcy filings. Many American families that look prosperous have so many debts they are just one emergency away from financial disaster.

We know, because we talk to people all of the time who are in this situation.

A woman in her sixties called The Dolans radio show to say she wanted to retire and had $53,000 in her retirement account, but $45,000 in debt from credit cards and loans. Talk about a big dose of reality. We told her, point blank, that she would probably have to keep working for years to come in order to pay off those debts.

A man in his seventies phoned in to our show and confessed he had a maxed-out credit card that his wife of almost 50 years knew nothing about. He was worried that if he died before paying it off, she would be saddled with a bill their meager pension and Social Security benefits could never pay.

Consider some scary statistics from CardWeb.com: In 2005 there were 1.4 trillion payment cards in circulation in the United States, including credit cards, debit cards, and store cards, which means an average of around 15 cards for every American household! American consumers currently owe nearly $700 billion on all credit cards and carry, on average, more than $8,000 in credit card debt from month to month.

The actual stories we hear are a lot worse than these statistics. All too often someone calls us saying they can no longer make the minimum payments on three, six, even 12 credit cards.

Next: Get on track with our Debt Clinic Worksheet

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