Interest rates have soared in 2022. Here’s how much more you’re paying to borrow

Canadians are increasingly worried interest rates are rising faster than they can keep up, and it's not just homeowners. Here's who's feeling the pain as debt costs soar.

The Bank of Canada capped off its 2022 interest rate schedule with another increase on Wednesday, with some Canadian mortgage holders paying roughly $1,400 more per month on their home loans following a year of aggressive hikes.

The central bank has increased its policy rate by four percentage points since March, marking one of the fastest tightening cycles in its history.

John Willis, financial planner at Meridian Credit Union, says Wednesday’s 50-basis-point hike is just the one hurdle Canadians will look at when recalculating their budgets to account for higher interest payments in 2023.

“If we think about the half-point increase today, that’s not so much the big deal. The big deal is the fact that we’ve had seven increases in 2022,” he tells Global News.

The Bank of Canada’s policy rate sets interest payments directly or indirectly for many types of debt — something Canadians have a lot of right now.

Equifax Canada said this week that total consumer debt hit $2.36 trillion in the third quarter, a 7.3 per cent increase year-over-year.

Ipsos polling conducted exclusively for Global News shows that higher interest rates are weighing on Canadians’ minds and bank accounts.

Some 71 per cent of respondents said they were worried interest rates would rise faster than they can keep up, according to the polling conducted Nov. 11-15. That’s four percentage points higher than a similar survey in October.