force lawmakers to balance the budget each year as is required in his state. but for now it seems as if the national debt is snowballing. look at this. when president clinton left office in 2001 the debt was $5.66 trillion. it doubled during president s bush s administration to 10.7 trillion and nearly doubled again to almost $20 trillion during president barack obama s administration, $8 trillion was added during the trump administration to reach more than $27 trillion. consider this, ben, if we needed to pay off the near $30 trillion in debt that we have right now, u.s. debt clock.org said each taxpayer would owe $232,240. ben. benjamin: such a big figure it is hard to imagine them. clocking up that quickly is something else. lydia, thank you.
year s resolutions to lose the weight and get finances into shape and check out the mind blowing number here. according to the folks at u.s. debt clock.org. more than $16 trillion. nearly $14 trillion of that is mortgage debt alone. big, big numbers we re talking about. another $3 trillion is debt owed on credit cards. that number is also something that we would want to watch. we re talking about school loans and car loans, as well. david bach debt free for life financial freedom. in your new book you promise readers they ll be debt free an average of 15 years. 15 years. the average person can save about $30,000 in interest payments. what we ve also seen is that most americans can save much more than that. in fact, we ll give you examples where people can save six figures in interest payments. let s start on some things we can focus on. things like credit cards. that s big on your list.