American consumers are on pace to add $43.5 billion in creditcard debt this year and the average household now has about $6,700in such debt, according to CardHub.com.

CardHub.com, a service of Evolution Finance of Arlington, Va.,said the key findings of its second quarter report include good andbad news for consumers.

“On the bright side, we have done a better job paying our creditcard bills each of the past two quarters than we did last year,marking the first time since 2009 that we've seen two consecutivequarters of improvement relative to the respective quarters theyear before,” said Card Hub CEO Odysseas Papadimitriou.

“While the metrics have indeed been better, you must considerthe basis for comparison: 2011 was a bad year for consumeroverleveraging, with credit card debt increasing by $46.7 billionduring the course of the year, and the fact that we've only seenslight improvements this year means we are on a similar track,”Papadimitriou said.

Papadimitriou concluded, “I hate to sound like a broken record,but people simply cannot continue to live in denial, thinking thatthe economy's improvement means they can take spending back topre-recession levels. Pre-recession spending was inextricablytied to the housing bubble, and its collapse means that we all haveto adjust.

“Perhaps more people have gotten the message, judging from ourimproved performance thus far this year relative to last, but ourpay downs were still more significant and our buildups less severethan in 2010 when we were battening down the hatches in the face ofthe recession.”

The card comparison and evaluation service's complete Q2 2012Credit Card Debt Study is available online.