Louisville ranks low in terms of handling personal finances during pandemic
(The Center Square) – Louisville residents seem to have struggled to finances better during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic than others around the country, according to a recently released survey.
WalletHub, a personal finance website, compared 100 cities to determine where people needed to borrow the most money during the pandemic. It used 20 key metrics over the last two quarters of 2020 in terms of factors such as the change in credit card debt, average mortgage balance and average usage of lines of credit.
Louisville, the only Kentucky city in the study, ranked 28th in the list of cities taking on the most debt during the pandemic.
According to WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez, the first federal stimulus package helped communities across the country and the second, while smaller, could also provide some relief.
“The first COVID-19 stimulus payments were an extremely big help to Americans in debt. For example, during the first three quarters of 2020, we saw the highest credit card debt paydowns in decades,” Gonzalez said. “The second stimulus payment is smaller than the first, but it should still prove helpful and allow people to pay down additional debts if they don’t need to use it for everyday expenses.”
The city that took on the most debt was Winston-Salem, North Carolina, followed by Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Corpus Christi, Texas and San Bernadino, California. By contrast, Scottsdale, Arizona ranked as the best in the nation, followed by Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Mesa, Arizona; and Minneapolis.
“Of the top 10 cities that have taken on the most debt, the type of debt that saw the highest average percentage increase was mortgage debt, followed by credit card debt, auto loan debt and student loan debt,” Gonzalez said.
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