Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"We are paying down on our debts, particularly consumer credit, like credit card balances. For example, before the recession, households were adding to their non-mortgage debt at the rate of about 1 percent every three months. Their non-mortgage debt was going up 1 percent every three months. Now, they're actually reducing their non-mortgage debt at the rate of a half percentage point every three months. And what this has done is it has marginally pushed down the percentage of our income - our disposable income - that we households have to use to pay interest and principal on our consumer debt. It's gone down last year from 14.3 percent to this year at 13.9 percent. So that's all good. One of the problems, though, is that for many households - not all - it's kind of a race between reducing their debt as fast as their income is going down. And many households are finding that, yes, they are reducing their debt. They're paying down on credit card balances, but their income is going down, either because they've lost their job or maybe at least have had their hours cut back. So I think the bottom line here is that consumers are taking action, but many consumers are finding it's just not enough."