It's not as black-and-white as that money going directly to car payments, according to Chris Kuklas, the senior markets and policy fellow at CFPB and the other co-author of the report.
The stimulus, despite most forms being gone for more than a year, allowed lower-income consumers to build up savings. As payment amounts increased, those accounts began to be drained.
"What people started to do was to draw down on those cushions," Kuklas said. "What we're beginning to see over the last few months are families starting to hit the point where they've spent down that savings they were able to build because of the financial stimulus that had helped keep them afloat."
Contrary to popular belief, rising inflation across the country is most likely not contributing to the rise in delinquencies, Litwin said.
While the higher costs will strain a family or individual's monthly budget, a car payment is usually not the first bill to fall behind on because of a vehicle's importance.
"For most Americans, if you don't have a car, you can't get to work. You can't take your kids to school," Litwin said. "I don't want to say how much inflation is directly affecting a consumer's ability to pay for their auto loan, but it is going to force consumers to stretch their monthly budgets."
There is an upside to the rise in delinquencies — it could just be a normalization of the market. Many lenders Litwin and Kukla talked with said the rates were merely returning to what they were before the COVID-19 pandemic when they were notably trending upward of 5 percent.