NEW YORK — After a stint of frugality, Americans have returned to their borrowing ways. But are they getting into the kinds of debt trouble that lead to recessions?

U.S. consumers now owe roughly $12.73 trillion to banks and other lenders for mortgages, car loans and credit card spending, according to the New York Federal Reserve. That exceeds even the total before the last financial crisis.

Economists generally say people’s willingness to borrow is a good thing, because it shows they’re more confident about their financial futures. And the economy is in far better shape than a decade ago, when economists called the debt unsustainable and the housing market crashed. That’s not the concern now.

“Some of us are worried that consumers are going back into old habits, but the U.S. consumer is in a much different position before the financial crisis and even before in the late 1990s,” said Ryan Sweet, an economist with Moody’s Analytics.

Gone are the worries about second homes financed with no-money down mortgages. The stress points now are in three main categories: auto loans, credit cards and — to a greater extent but for different reasons — student loans.

“If it’s not a tool you can use to build stability and long-term net worth, debt leads to more problems than it can solve,” said Todd Christensen, a credit counselor with the nonprofit organization Debt Reduction Services.

STUDENT LOANS

Not all debt is considered equal, and both mortgages and student loans have typically been considered ways for people to leverage themselves into a better life. A home loan historically has been a way for middle-class Americans to build wealth, while student loans helped people get better-paying jobs.

Student loans have become a source of concern, though, as they become a greater proportion of the debt Americans owe — and those debts are not being paid back. In 2007, student loan debt was less than 5 percent of the debt Americans owned. That figure has more than doubled in 10 years to nearly 11 percent.

As college costs have risen and student loans get larger, the amounts that are delinquent have been increasing. Americans currently have $1.34 trillion in student loan debt, of which 10.98 percent is 90 or more days past due. That’s up from 6.85 percent of loans 10 years ago.

CAR LOANS

Americans have been on a car-buying binge, as automakers sold a record 17.6 million cars last year to beat the level set a year earlier. People are also borrowing more money to buy their cars and are financing them for longer periods of time.

The average length of a new-car loan is around 62 months, compared to 55 months before the Great Recession, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve. And delinquencies in auto loans have been inching higher as well. The percent of auto loans 90 or more days past due has climbed for 13 straight months, to 2.30 percent of all loans. Five years ago, that figure was 1.63 percent.

CREDIT CARDS

Of the three worry spots, credit cards are often seen as the most toxic of debts. They’re easy to accumulate, generally used to buy non-wealth generating consumer goods and often have the highest interest rates.

Americans are carrying less credit card debt then they did before the Great Recession, but have re-embraced using them. Credit card debt has risen from $659 billion in 2014 to $746 billion last year, according to data from the New York Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, after years of trending lower, Federal Reserve data shows credit card delinquencies have reversed course and are climbing again — albeit still from relatively low levels.