Most Ohio cities rank high in terms of handling personal finances during pandemic
(The Center Square) – Most of Ohio’s larger cities seem to have handled 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.
Cleveland, which showed the lowest mortgage debt in the national, ranked as Ohio’s top city, coming in at 85th nationwide, followed by Columbus at 79th and Cincinnati at 60th.
However, Toledo is the one Buckeye State exception. The Northwest Ohio city ranked 29th , even though it ranked as one of the best cities in terms of low credit card debt and credit card usage during the final two quarters of 2020.
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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