This City Has the Most Credit Card Debt in America

Nationwide, Americans owe $807 billion across 506 million credit cards. That means there are 1.5 cards per person, though that figure is misleading to the extent that few people under 18 have a card. Some studies show characteristics of credit card debt by demographics. As would be expected, people with higher incomes have more debt than people in lower-income brackets.

Including both bank and retail plastic, credit card debt averaged $6,569 per cardholder with unpaid balances in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to “2022 Credit Card Debt Statistics” from Lending Tree. Just like housing costs and gasoline prices, credit card debt varies by state.

To identify the city with the most credit card debt last year, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed WalletHub’s ranking of the average household credit card debt for 182 U.S. cities. All data is from the report, except median household income figures, which are from the Census Bureau American Community Survey 2019 five-year estimates. To create its report, WalletHub used data from the Census Bureau, Federal Reserve, TransUnion and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Among the 25 U.S. cities whose households carry the most credit card debt, the average outstanding balance ranges from $12,900 in Anaheim, California, to $16,126 in Pearl City, Hawaii.
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The average credit card debt per household in the cities with the most credit card debt was $13,932 as of the end of 2021, after households in these cities paid down an average of $2,442 of their credit card debt throughout the year. Collectively, credit card debtors in these cities owed $4.1 billion by the end of 2021, after paying $653 million worth of outstanding credit card debt that year.

Debtors with higher outstanding balances tend to have higher debt paydowns, as they perhaps try harder to lower their high balances, but that is not always the case. Pearl City’s credit card debtors, for example, paid down only an average of $908 per household last year, despite owing the most on average among the 181 cities WalletHub reviewed. In contrast, households in Santa Clarita, California, paid down an average of $4,715, the highest paydown among cities reviewed, ending last year with an average credit card of $14,995.

Here are the details about credit card debt in Pearl City:

• Average household credit card debt in 2021: $16,126
• Household credit card debt paydown, 2020 to 2021: −$908 (second highest)
• Total credit card debt: $225.59 million (175th most)
• Median household income: $100,057 (sixth highest)

Click here to see all the cities with the most credit card debt.
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