Type what your household owes. See it against every household in the country, including the ones who owe nothing at all.
My household owes € and earns € a year before tax in Belgium. Age of the reference person:
Income is pre-filled with the published median for Belgium: €52,500. Change it for your own answer, or leave it and read the country's typical picture. The survey reconstructs gross income from net answers here, so the denominator of every ratio is an estimate the survey publishes, not a tax figure.
Your debt vs gross income · households in Belgium
152%
Above the typical load.
Heavier than the 100.8% median, but short of the 347.9% carried by the most-leveraged tenth.
You owe €80,000 against €52,500 of gross income. The typical indebted household in Belgium owes 100.8% of its gross income. You are at 1.5× that.
Read-out one
Where that amount sits.
48.8% of households in Belgium carry debt at all, and the survey publishes the distribution only for them. Among those households the median debt is €80,000 and the average is €107,800. The gap between the two is the handful of very large mortgages pulling the average up.
Lightest tenth
€1K
P10 of indebted households
One in ten indebted households in Belgium owes less than this.
Median debt
€80K
P50 of indebted households
Half owe more, half owe less. The average is €108K.
Heaviest tenth
€248K
P90 of indebted households
One in ten indebted households in Belgium owes more than this.
€80,000 sits at roughly the 50th percentile of indebted households in Belgium, read among households with debt rather than among all of them.
Read-out two
Debt against income.
The ratio that lenders and central banks actually watch. In Belgium the median indebted household owes 100.8% of its gross annual income; the most-leveraged tenth are at 347.9%. Across the euro area the median is 66.0%.
0%376%
You: 152%
Median: 100.8%
Top decile: 347.9%
One number worth reading twice: 100.8% is the median of household-level ratios, not the median debt divided by the median income. A household holding the median debt (€80,000) on the median income (€52,500) lands at 152%, because the two medians belong to different households and their quotient is not the published median.
At 152% of gross income you are above the 100.8% median for indebted households in Belgium, but below the 347.9% that marks the top decile, which at your income would be €182,648 of debt.
Euro-area median
66.0%
Across the euro area, indebted households owe 66.0% of gross income. The figure for Belgium is 100.8%: the same survey, the same definition, a different borrowing culture.
The stretched tenth
347.9%
Nine in ten indebted households in Belgium owe less than this multiple of their income. The euro-area figure at the same percentile is 374.5%.
Debt against assets
25.0%
Income is only half the picture: the median indebted household in Belgium owes this share of what it owns, and carries a loan-to-value of 35.4% on its home.
Read-out three
What carrying it costs.
Debt service is what leaves the account every month. The typical indebted household in Belgium pays €860 a month, which is 13.6% of gross income among those actually making payments; averaged over every indebted household, including those with nothing due, the ratio is 11.7%. The euro-area median is 12.5%.
We pay € a month towards it.
Leave that blank and the cards below describe other households: the typical indebted household in Belgium pays €860 a month, against €507 across the euro area. Fill it in and the page scores your own payment instead.
Median payment burden
13.6%
€860/month, published
Half of the households in Belgium making payments spend less of their income than this on debt.
Mortgage holders
13.8%
€875/month, published
The median share of gross income going to mortgage payments in Belgium.
Most stretched tenth
27.1%
No published payment figure
One in ten households in Belgium with payments spends more than this on debt service.
Payment amounts are the survey's own published medians (Table E7), not a ratio applied to your income. Your figure depends on your rate and remaining term.
Debt over a lifetime
The same country, six different answers.
Debt is not a level, it is a stage. In Belgium the load peaks at 226.2% of gross income for households aged 16 to 34 and falls to 7.1% for the oldest. Pick a band to compare against it rather than against the all-ages median, which mixes both ends together.
61.9% carry debt · median €191K · 16.7% of income on payments · 2.3% owe more than they own
75.2% carry debt · median €136K · 14.0% of income on payments · 3.1% owe more than they own
70.7% carry debt · median €76K · 12.3% of income on payments · 0.4% owe more than they own
49.6% carry debt · median €31K · 10.9% of income on payments · 0.7% owe more than they own
20.0% carry debt · median €2K · 11.8% of income on payments · 4.5% owe more than they own
Bars are the median debt-to-income ratio for each band; the amber line is where you sit. Click a band to compare against it.
The same debt, elsewhere
Would this be normal in another country?
Your 152% of gross income, scored against every country in this comparison. The definitions are identical everywhere, so the only thing changing across the rows is the borrowing culture.
Country
Median
You vs that median
Where you land
🇧🇪Belgiumthis page
100.8%
1.5× the medianunder the 347.9% top decile
🇦🇹Austria
29.5%
5.2× the medianunder the 228.3% top decile
🇩🇪Germany
35.3%
4.3× the medianunder the 282.6% top decile
🇮🇪Ireland
42.5%
3.6× the medianunder the 249.6% top decile
🇮🇹Italy
58.7%
2.6× the medianunder the 299.4% top decile
🇫🇮Finland
80.6%
1.9× the medianunder the 283.8% top decile
🇪🇸Spain
84.3%
1.8× the medianunder the 389.0% top decile
🇫🇷France
92.0%
1.7× the medianunder the 437.2% top decile
🇵🇹Portugal
102.6%
1.5× the medianunder the 424.1% top decile
🇱🇺Luxembourg
125.8%
1.2× the medianunder the 655.9% top decile
🇳🇱the Netherlands
206.4%
0.7× the medianunder the 629.1% top decile
Medians are Table F1 and top deciles Table F2, both among indebted households and across all ages, so these rows do not move when you pick an age band above.
What the debt is made of
Mortgages, or everything else.
Property debt is 94.1% of all household debt in Belgium; the remaining 5.9% is credit lines, cards and other loans. The share of households holding each kind is a separate question from how much of the money it represents: a lot of households owe a little on cards, and a few owe a lot on a house.
Mortgage on the main home80.6%
Mortgage on other property13.5%
Credit lines and overdrafts0.2%
Credit-card debt0.2%
Other non-mortgage loans5.5%
Own-home mortgage
33.9% of households
Median outstanding among those who hold it: €114,200.
Other-property mortgage
4.7% of households
Median outstanding among those who hold it: €110,000.
Non-mortgage debt
21.8% of households
Median outstanding among those who hold it: €3,900.
Three numbers worth the asterisk
What Belgium looks like from the outside.
Share of all household debt that is property debt
94.1%, among the highest of the 11 countries here
94.1% of every euro owed by households in Belgium is secured on property. Consumer credit barely registers, so household debt here is essentially a housing story.
Underwater households
1.9%
Share of households in Belgium whose debts exceed everything they own. The euro-area figure is 3.6%.
Households with any debt
48.8%
Against 41.5% across the euro area. The other 51.2% of households in Belgium owe nothing at all.
Typical debt, when there is debt
€80,000
Median outstanding among households in Belgium that hold any debt. Across the euro area the same figure is €31,800.
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Yes. 94.1% of every euro owed by households in Belgium is secured on property, which is among the highest of the 11 countries covered here. Only 5.9% is consumer credit and other loans, and credit-card balances account for 0.2% of household debt. Household debt here is effectively a housing story, so interest rates and property prices move it far more than consumer borrowing does.
Among households that hold debt, the median outstanding balance in Belgium is €80,000 and the average is €107,800. The gap between the two is the point: a small number of very large mortgages pull the average well above the middle. The lightest tenth of indebted households owe under €1,300; the heaviest tenth owe more than €248,400. Note that these figures cover only the 48.8% of households that actually hold debt; the survey publishes no distribution for the rest.
51.2% of households in Belgium carry no debt at all, since 48.8% hold at least one liability. Across the euro area 41.5% of households hold debt, so being debt-free is less common here than the euro-area average. Being debt-free is a real position in this data, not a missing value: the survey counts those households, it simply publishes no debt distribution for them.
The median indebted household in Belgium owes 100.8% of its gross annual income, and the most-leveraged tenth are at 347.9% or more. The euro-area median is 66.0%. Anything between those two points is ordinary for a household with debt; above 347.9% you are in the top decile of leverage for the country. One caution: 100.8% is the median of household-level ratios, not the median debt divided by the median income, and those two medians belong to different households.
The survey does not prescribe a limit, but it does show what households actually do. Among households in Belgium making payments, the median is 13.6% of gross income; mortgage holders specifically are at 13.8%; and the most stretched tenth spend 27.1%. Averaged over all indebted households, including those with nothing due, the figure is 11.7%. The euro-area median is 12.5%.
There is no official threshold in the survey, but three published markers together make the case. Debt above 347.9% of gross income puts a household in the most-leveraged tenth in Belgium; debt service above 27.1% of gross income does the same on the payment side; and 1.9% of households already owe more than everything they own. The liquid buffer matters as much as the ratios: median net liquid assets in Belgium are 47.3% of gross income.
33.9% of households in Belgium hold a mortgage on the home they live in, with a median outstanding balance of €114,200. A further 4.7% hold a mortgage on other property. The median loan-to-value on the main residence is 35.4%, and the median indebted household's total debt is 25.0% of everything it owns.
1.9% of households in Belgium owe more than everything they own is worth, against 3.6% across the euro area. Negative net wealth is not the same as being unable to pay (a recent mortgage on a home that has not yet appreciated produces it too), but it is the point at which a forced sale would not clear the debt.
48.8% of households in Belgium carry debt against 41.5% across the euro area, and the median indebted household owes €80,000 against a euro-area median of €31,800. On the ratios that matter, Belgium is at 100.8% of gross income against 66.0% for the euro area, and spends 13.6% of income on debt service against 12.5%. All of it comes from the same survey, run to the same definitions in every country.
Every figure on this page comes from the European Central Bank's Household Finance and Consumption Survey, wave 2023, published in 2026. Participation shares are Table E1, median debt by type Table E2, the composition of debt Table E3, and the distribution among indebted households Table E4; the ratios are Tables F1 and F2, negative net wealth Table F3, and median gross household income Table I3. Where the survey published no figure (too few observations, or an item not collected), this page says so rather than showing a zero. Gross income in Belgium is reconstructed by the survey from net answers, so the denominator of every ratio here is the survey's own estimate rather than a tax figure.