Most people don’t know what their own credit score is, let alone their city’s average, and how that compares to neighboring municipalities and the national mean of 668. That’s unfortunate. On a practical level, being unaware of what your credit qualifies you for can make it difficult to know if you’re being ripped off on your credit card, auto loan or mortgage.
[See: Best Credit Cards: Find the Right Card for You.]
But there’s also much we can learn by comparing cities with the best and worst credit scores. In fact, this exercise unearths a number of important correlations between credit and factors like crime, affluence, age and even physique. Just remember that such connections don’t represent any definitive cause-and-effect relationship. They’re simply food for thought. So let’s get started. Here are three key observations.
1. Great Credit Is a Symptom of General Affluence
It makes sense that areas with abnormally high credit scores would also be characterized by lofty income levels and home values. But the disparities between cities with the best and worst average credit scores are nevertheless pretty startling. The average person in the 10 cities with the best credit scores makes about $104,467, which is 281 percent more than the $27,410 pulled in by his or her counterpart in the 10 cities with the worst scores (see the table below). And the good-credit group’s median home is worth $521,600, an astounding 559 percent more than the bad-credit group’s $79,170.
[See: 10 Simple Ways to Raise Your Credit Score.]
Perhaps unsurprisingly, crime is also far more prevalent in the areas with the lowest credit scores. The worst-credit cities average 421 violent crimes per year, according to FBI data, compared to 138 for the best-credit cities. That’s a crime-rate disparity of 206 percent between two groups whose average credit scores are only 30 percent apart.
| Top 10 Cities | Credit Score | Bottom 10 Cities | Credit Score |
| 1. The Villages, Fla. | 779.51 |
1. Gary, Ind. |
588.4 |
| 2. Sun City West, Ariz. | 758.08 | 2. Inkster, Mich. | 588.4 |
|
3. Saratoga, Calif. |
755.7 |
3. West Memphis, Ark. |
586.19 |
|
4. Los Altos, Calif. |
754.12 |
4. Union City, Ga. |
586.07 |
|
5. Sun City Center, Fla. |
753.05 |
5. Chester, Pa. |
583.17 |
|
6. Needham, Mass. |
750.94 |
6. College Park, Ga. |
582.8 |
|
7. Lexington, Mass. |
750.59 |
7. Forest Park, Ga. |
579.75 |
|
8. Laguna Woods, Calif. |
749.6 |
8. Harvey, Ill. |
573.61 |
|
9. Pittsford, N.Y. |
749.49 |
9. East St. Louis, Ill. |
571.41 |
|
10. Potomac, Md. |
748.63 |
10. Camden, N.J. |
565.62 |
2. The Best-Credit Cities Are Older and Wiser
The median age in cities with the best credit is 56, on average, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. That’s more than two decades older than the median age of 32 in cities with the worst credit.
This dynamic may seem natural to some and perhaps backward to others. After all, additional years could provide either the time needed to truly establish a track record of credit responsibility or just more time to mess up.
But is seems that old age ultimately wins out. Maybe we just need time to outrun the mistakes of our youth, or perhaps financial-savvy is required to one day afford to seclude yourself from young rabble rousers.
[See: What to Do If You’ve Fallen (Way) Behind on Your Credit Card Payments.]
3. The Worst-Credit Cities Are Fatter
Interestingly, there is a strong correlation between credit scores and obesity. As somewhat anecdotal evidence of this, Memphis and Indianapolis are two of America’s five fattest cities, in addition to being in the bottom 10 percent in terms of average credit score. On the opposite end of the spectrum, San Francisco and Boston are among the 10 thinnest cities and have higher credit scores than at least 70 percent of municipalities. Further supporting this connection, 54 percent of people who exercise frequently have excellent credit, according to a nationally-representative WalletHub survey.
Now having a bad credit score won’t make you fat, nor will some extra pounds take points off your credit score. But stress-inducing financial problems could cause both weight gain and credit-score loss.
To recap: A city’s overall financial characteristics aren’t necessarily the fate of those who live there. There are a number of things you can do to buck the trend if you live somewhere with a bad average score, and you can certainly mess up your credit even if you hail from a place with a stellar average.
The first step is to actually check your credit score, and then keep checking it on a regular basis. As long as you have a loan or line of credit that’s in good standing and you pay your bill on time every month, you should see steady improvement over time.
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3 Observations From Cities With the Best and Worst Credit Scores originally appeared on usnews.com
