It’s all about perception.

While several indicators show that Americans’ finances remain in good shape nearly two years into the pandemic, many folks aren’t feeling secure.

Americans are more worried about missing a debt payment in the next three months than at any time in the last 17 months, according to the New York Fed’s October Survey of Consumer Expectations, while more respondents said they are worse off compared with a year ago.

Consumer expectations for personal finances and business conditions also deteriorated in October, according to the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers, with both measures dropping by double-digits in the last six months.

“It does matter how people feel and it will have an effect on their behavior,” Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and former Federal Reserve economist, told Yahoo Money. “What is in their bank account has more of an effect, but how they feel is important.”

‘That doesn't correspond to what people are seeing’

Rising inflation may be one reason consumers are less bullish about their finances, Dean Baker, chief economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Yahoo Money.

Consumer prices soared 6.2% in October year over year, clocking in the fastest annual rise in consumer inflation since 1990, according to the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index (CPI). The one-year median inflation expectations reached 5.7%, a new series high, according to the New York Fed data.

“People are hearing that things are getting really bad,” Baker said. “That doesn't correspond to what people are seeing. People are seeing job opportunities as they’ve never seen — at least large segments of the workforce — and they're seeing pay increases. Why would they think they're more likely to miss a debt payment?”

Americans said there was an 11.2% chance they would miss a minimum debt payment in the next three months, the New York Fed survey found, the highest expectation rate since May 2020. The largest increase came from households making below $50,000, while that expectation dropped for households making between $50,000 and $100,000 and those making above $100,000.

But those expectations have yet to bear out. Delinquencies have declined since the beginning of the pandemic and remain low, according to the New York Federal Reserve’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. As of late September, 2.7% of outstanding debt was in some stage of delinquency, a 2 percentage point drop from pre-pandemic levels in the fourth quarter of 2019.