Nearly 20% of Americans feel they'll never get out of debt

Many consumers pulled out their credit cards to pay for holiday purchases this year.

Some also may have had a student loan, car note, and mortgage to pay.

And at least a few may have been among the 18 percent of Americans who feel they'll never dig out of the debt hole.

That staggering number comes from a national phone survey of 1,001 Americans commissioned by CreditCards.com and conducted in English and Spanish during the first week of December - just as the frenzy of holiday shopping approached critical mass.

The figure is double the result from last year's survey. It's a scary finding. Here's another: Almost 20 percent of people have lost hope of ever achieving financial freedom.

What we should not want to see is these people giving up.

"If there's no hope of ever becoming debt-free, is there sense in trying?" asked Todd Mark, vice president of education at Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Dallas. "Or will they just say: 'It is what it is, I'm always going to be in arrears, I'm always going to have debt, so I don't need to focus on other good habits, and let the pieces fall where they may.' "

The survey asked about debt broadly, which means it covered not only credit cards but also car loans, student loans, and home mortgages.

"It's a combination of things that have been written about a lot," said Matt Schulz, senior analyst at CreditCards.com. "Everything from student debt loans to a slowly improving economy, to fairly stagnant wages - it all adds up to people being a little bit concerned about their ability to get out of the debt that they have."

The survey results weren't all bad, however.

Although more than one-third of Americans have incurred debt this holiday season, 55 percent say they will eliminate it within a month, and 74 percent said they expected their holiday debt to linger no more than three months.

"That's actually a sign that people, even though they might feel a little nervous and a little scared in the long term, this holiday debt question is an indicator that at least they're trying to watch for what they're doing and to be smart in the short term," Schulz said.

The more important group to be addressed includes those who have given up.

"It's easy to feel paralyzed when you're overloaded with debt and feel like you'll never get out. But the worst thing you can do is nothing," Schulz said. "It's incredibly important to make moves to begin knocking down those debts before they truly do grow out of control."

Mark offered some observations.

"Are you liquidating things on a monthly or yearly basis that makes you feel like you're getting closer?" he asked. "Anything you can do to reduce your costs will be helpful, but in the end, it's still up to you to pay money down on the principal."

The survey's margin of error for the full sample was plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, 4.3 percentage points for those with debt.