We employ a novel approach to establish a clear debt payment hierarchy: Housing payments (mortgage or rent) are prioritized most, followed by auto loans, credit cards, and student loans. This hierarchy is robust across five quarters of the survey and a variety of demographic segments that differ in financial circumstances and levels of financial literacy. The prioritization we observe in our survey data generally aligns with the rank ordering of transition rates into serious delinquency across loan types observed in credit bureau data. At the same time, we find that some more financially vulnerable populations (such as renters, lower-income individuals, and those with less education) deprioritize nonhousing debt payments more severely than their counterparts in order to prioritize their housing payments. These findings highlight the central role of housing in household financial stability and suggest that housing-related financial shocks may have downstream effects on payments of nonhousing debts, particularly for financially vulnerable populations.

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