Credit Report for Richest and Poorest Neighborhoods in America

I'm baffled that the credit scores of the rich weren't higher than that. I expected them to all be close to 800 or so, not within 50 points of the extremely poor. I guess it's nice to be rich, but that doesn't mean you're getting a better interest rate.

Yeah, I guess when you're jet-setting around the globe or running a corporate empire, it's easy for a monthly credit card payment to go astray.

I'm not sure what relevance exists to the mortgage balances in poor neighborhoods, unless you're referring ONLY to owner-occupants. The poor in poor neighborhoods hold few of the mortgages in their neighborhoods. Rents are a higher proportion of home values in poor neighborhoods than in other neighborhoods, so landlords tend to not be averse to carry mortgage balances which seem high for their tenants' incomes.

Poor owner-occupants in those neighborhoods are very likely to be elderly and to own their homes without a mortgage (because they once had one and paid it off). There are few homeowners among the non-elderly working poor.

Good point Terry. It would be interesting to do a follow-up study about how many of the residents in these poorest communities are renters, not home owners. For instance, the percentage of renter-occupied units in Anapra, NM is 31%, which is fairly high.

From my understanding the only mortgages included in the calculations are those that are from people who live in those neighborhoods and have a mortgage with a balance. So those mortgage numbers do not include the people without a mortgage or those with paid off homes. Now we don't have the numbers for what percentage of those people actually have a mortgage so it could be very low, but of those that do, those are the averages.

Is it just me or does anyone else find it interesting that the colder the state, the better they seem to do at managing their credit score?

I guess I'm out of luck in Florida.

Yep, rich are still human. And it also shows that credit scores take longer to repair than finances. Some of these could have made mistakes six months prior to making some smart moves, gotten rich and are still suffering from bad credit.

@Wojciech - You're right, Florida is having a hard time (credit-wise, at least). The average Miami resident, according to a recent study, has credit card debt equal to 23% of his or her annual salary. That's the highest in the nation. Yikes!

I also wondered it the lower than expected credit scores among the very rich showed an indifference to credit score since they might have less of a need to finance.

The rich also have the money to pay for their items in cash...they don't need credit...and in order to build good credit, you have to have some outstanding.

Credit card averages under $1000?
I thought the last average was closer to $8000/person carrying a balance.

@JoeTaxpayer

The discrepancy is likely because this is a tiny sample of the very richest and very poorest areas in the country; so they are paying off every month or don't make enough to be extended much credit.

We pulled those numbers from Equifax (http://learn.equifax.com/credit/credit-ranking). It is possible they are not counting certain types of revolving debt as "credit cards".

I could add a few to the list. There are so many credit poor places, especially in this economy. But most people should forget about credit and go straight to cash anyway.