Is it 2009-2010 or 1972-1973? If you're paying college tuition this year, it may be hard to tell. Tuition is up only 4.3% for the coming school year, the lowest rate of growth in 37 years, according to a survey of 350 private schools by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. This is down substantially from the 5.9% increase for the 2008-2009 school year. Of course, this is for tuition only and does not include room and board inflation.

Before celebrating, though, remember that depressed housing prices and constrained financial markets make it tougher to dip into home equity to pay for school (a favorite strategy of the past few years), and layoffs are putting an obvious strain on household finances. So, the bargain in all this may be hard to find, even with financial aid increases of 9.2%.

Just call it a record year for U.S. homeowners -- a distinction they don't want to repeat.

U.S. homeowners lost an astounding $3.3 trillion in home value in 2008, as the worst slump in the residential real estate segment intensified amid the U.S. recession, Zillow.com announced Tuesday. Further, homeowners lost $1.4 trillion in value in Q4 2008. In 2007, homeowners lost $1.3 trillion in value.

Further, the median home price based on data collected by Zillow.com plummeted 11.6% to $192,119 in 2008. Meanwhile, the percent of homeowners with negative equity -- home values less than their amount owed -- jumped to 17.6% in Q4 2008 from 14.3% in Q3 2008.

Investors may have hoped that falling home prices and the mortgage-backed paper that goes with them would be the only big shoe to drop at US financial firms. They should only be so lucky.

Credit cards are likely to be the next Waterloo for the banking system. According to The Wall Street Journal, "A broader range of consumers now carry cards and many run consistent credit balances to fund their lifestyles. This has led to successively higher peaks over the years in credit-card charge-off rates."

It is worth pausing for a moment to think about that. Banks are being recapitalized by the Treasury. There is some hope that earnings at big financial firms will begin to recover by the middle of next year as the housing market becomes more stable. How could future losses at banks rival those seen in the last three quarters?

The fact is that many consumers are having trouble paying for their homes and relatively expensive gas at the same time. The average citizen has gone wild buying plasma TVs and video game consoles for the kids. Most of that is on the plastic sitting in the pockets of those who are already stretched too thin.

Until recently, a home equity line was the easy way to get some cash to pay down those card balances. Housing prices have cut that off.

How much is a stake.? No one knows? But, what if 100 million working Americans have $2,000 each on their plastic? That number is too big to calculate because most calculators do not have than many zeros. Some of it is not going to be paid back.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

It was fun while it lasted. All that extra money from your home equity that helped you finance your new car or the his and her flat-screen TVs.

The party may be over. The American Bankers Association yesterday released its quarterly survey of consumer loans, and noted that late payments on home equity loans rose to 2.15% in the first quarter. That's up quite a tick from 1.92% in the final quarter of last year.

Payments are considered delinquent if they are 30 or more days past late.

"There are still signs of consumer financial distress, which will continue throughout most of this year as the worst of the housing problem works its way through the economy," said James Chessen, the association's chief economist, in a press release. Still?

The ABA's survey is based on information supplied by more than 300 banks nationwide. Delinquencies on a bevy of other consumer loans are also growing, including those for auto, boats and home improvement, according to the survey. These loans increased 2.42% in the first quarter. That's up from the fourth quarter's 2.23% delinquency rate, and the highest since the second quarter of 2001, when, if you remember, we were in a recession.

Strangely, this same survey suggests that credit-card payment delinquencies are down. I don't know what to make of that one. But it's definitely just one more cloud on the horizon.