Rent and mortgage worries keep New England awake at night, survey shows

Americans are not as worried about their financial futures as they were during the Great Recession, but they're not exactly light hearted either. iStock/Getty Images

By Scott Van Voorhis

April 26, 2016

2 minutes to read

Does the thought of a hefty mortgage payment or a hike in your rent keep you up at night? If so, you are not alone.

Nearly a quarter of all Americans are losing sleep as they fret over mortgage or rental payments, according to a new report by CreditCards.com

That number is even higher in the Northeast (27 percent) and on the West Coast (29 percent) where both housing prices and rents are much higher than the rest of the country.

Add in other financial worries – credit card debt, paying for school, medical bills and putting away money for retirement – and the number of people losing sleep across the country rises to more than 60 percent, the survey finds.

“Many of us are worried about several different problems all at once,” said Matt Schulz, CreditCards.com’s senior industry analyst.

Still, homeowners and renters are sleeping better now than they did in the aftermath of the Great Recession, when the percentage of people kept awake by financial worries spiked at nearly 70 percent.

However, while that number has since fallen to 62 percent, it is still higher than it was back in the pre-recession days of 2007, when it stood at 57 percent.

“We are definitely losing less sleep than we did in the Great Recession but we are not resting quite as peacefully as we did before then,” Schulz said.

There has also been a shift in what people are spending those sleepless nights worrying about.

While large numbers of people are still stressing about their mortgage payments and rents, even more are now tossing and turning over saving for retirement (39 percent), paying for school (30 percent) and medical and insurance bills (29 percent).

Paying the mortgage or rent comes in fourth, followed by credit card debt (22 percent).

Back during the Great Recession, worries about making the mortgage or rent ranked higher.

In an odd way, this shift in worrying may represent progress of sorts, with people now having the relative luxury of worrying about more long-range goals, like retirement and paying for a son or daughter’s college education Schulz said.

Still, people in New England and across the Northeast remain the most stressed, with 7 percent staying awake at night worrying about every item on the list – mortgage/rent, medical bills, credit card debt, paying for school and saving for retirement.

Princeton Survey Research Associates International conducted the survey on behalf of CreditCards.com, interviewing 1,000 adults across the country between April 14-17.