Cities where most residents have credit card debt of $10,000 and higher: report
A new analysis estimates which cities had the most amount of people living with a five-figure credit card debt.
The report by CompareCards found about 1 in 6 cardholders living in some of America’s largest cities have a balance of $10,000 or more. The analysis found people living in the country’s richest cities had the most in debt. LendingTree’s CompareCards analyzed data from the Q1 2019 credit reports from 1.2 million MyLendingTree users to gather its findings.
“What we found is that most of the cities with the biggest percentages of people with five-figure credit card debt are clustered along the East Coast and West Coast. Often, it is the wealthiest cities — not the less affluent ones as one might expect — that carry the biggest credit card balances,” the report stated.
The study found 22.9 percent of credit card holders in Bridgeport, Conn., had a balance of more than $10,000. Meanwhile, 1.9 percent of credit card holders living in the city had a balance of more than $50,000.
Virginia Beach, Va., came in second with 20.5 percent of cardholders having a balance of more than $10,000, while only 0.6 percent of credit card users had a balance of more than $50,000.
The cities that followed were Washington, D.C, New York City, Los Angeles, Hartford, Conn., San Diego, Albany, N.Y., Oxnard, Calif. and Baltimore, respectively.
Cities that had the least amount of residents with credit card debt in the five-figure range, according to the study, included Winston-Salem N.C., Indianapolis, Greensboro, N.C., Colorado Springs, Colo., and Chattanooga, Tenn.
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The report noted metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of cardholders in the five-figure debt range had the highest income inequalities in the U.S., according to data from the Brookings Institution.
The report suggested credit card holders do what they can to focus on paying off their debt through budgeting, making higher payments and setting up automatic payments.