More US households are having trouble keeping up with their mortgage payments and other debt. Overall US household debt balances edged down by $13 billion, or 0.1%, to $18.8 trillion during the second quarter. However, the decline is largely an artifact of a quirk in how mortgage loans were recorded during the quarter, researchers noted. If it wasn’t for those gaps, mortgage balances would have remained flat for the quarter (which would have resulted in overall debt balances increasing by $61 billion, or 0.3%). Higher debt balances – even record-high ones – are to be expected.