Credit cards paid first, then home mortgage, new study reveals

Consumers are staying current with credit card bills and letting their mortgage payment slide, according to new study by credit reporting agency, which believes this is a major shift in how consumers will pay debts in future...
-- TransUnion Reports: "New" Payment Hierarchy May Be Here to Stay

A new study developed by TransUnion confirms that the "new" payment hierarchy -- where consumers pay their credit cards prior to their mortgages -- is continuing, with the trend occurring more readily than ever before.

"Conventional wisdom has always been that, when faced with a financial crisis, consumers will pay their secured obligations first, specifically their mortgages," said Sean Reardon, the author of the study and a consultant in TransUnion's analytics and decisioning services business unit. "However, a recent TransUnion analysis has found that increasingly more consumers are paying their credit cards before making mortgage payments. This analysis reaffirms the results of a previous TransUnion study that examined data between the third quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2008."