Texas: generally the cost of living is low. However, if you live in one of the four largest cities, like 2/3rds of the state's population:
- You need a car to do things (lots of financial distress there no matter the state).
- Housing is expensive.
- There is a lot of cheap labor keeping wages lower.
I can see why they might be at the top of that list.
I do wonder how much of this can be put down to an extremely lax regulatory environment within Texas itself.
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The methodology is arbitrary and is mostly a measurement of average credit score.
Methodology: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-most-people-in-fin...
This Equifax article lists CA has having a better average credit score than Texas. I did't bother to sort the Equifax to list to see how closely to correlates to the article, though.
https://www.equifax.com/personal/education/credit/score/arti...
Credit score is not a useful measure of financial health.
A minimum wage worker living paycheck to paycheck but making minimums on a large credit card balance will have a better score than a retiree who's long since paid off his house and car and pays cash for entertainment and playthings.
The minimum wage worker will not be making the minimum payment successfully on their credit card balance (bottom sixty percent of Americans cannot afford a basic quality of life [1] [2]). They likely can't produce $500 for an emergency, and use credit products with interest rates as high as ~30-35% with credit lines no larger than a few hundred or thousand dollars. The retiree you mention in your example will have an 800+ FICO credit score due to longevity of their trade lines (decades) and likely no inquiries (because they don't need to seek credit) or missed payments.
Cash flow underwriting would paint this picture better [3], but is still not widely performed outside of an org containing the deposit account (internal underwriting for credit products that don't have to conform for asset backed security sales). So, credit score is a reasonable proxy at this time for household financial health (imho) [4] [5] based on research performed by the CFPB.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-living-income-quality-o...
[3] https://fintechtakes.com/articles/2024-05-22/cash-flow-under...
[4] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/new-report-exp...
[5] https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_credit-ka...
(day job is in finance/consumer credit)
Here's the sorted Equifax list:
Minnesota 730
New Hampshire 727
Wisconsin 727
Vermont 726
Massachusetts 723
South Dakota 722
Washington 722
Colorado 720
Maine 720
Montana 720
North Dakota 720
Nebraska 720
Hawaii 719
Iowa 719
Utah 719
Idaho 718
Connecticut 717
New Jersey 717
Oregon 717
New York 713
Pennsylvania 713
Rhode Island 713
Wyoming 713
California 712
Illinois 712
Kansas 712
Virginia 712
Michigan 710
Alaska 709
Maryland 706
Ohio 706
Delaware 705
Missouri 705
Dist. of Col. 704
Indiana 704
Arizona 703
North Carolina 699
Florida 698
Tennessee 697
Kentucky 695
New Mexico 695
Puerto Rico 695
West Virginia 693
South Carolina 692
Nevada 691
Arkansas 688
Oklahoma 687
Georgia 686
Texas 686
Alabama 685
Louisiana 680
Mississippi 675
Any ranking of states that ends with Mississippi is one I can get behind
> The search engine part is especially nonsense
Maybe you need to read "Everybody Lies": https://www.harpercollins.com/products/everybody-lies-seth-s...
Just making sure you’re aware of the size of California and New York. Yes - has a small chunk of very affluent residents, but also huge populations, loads of people living well below the poverty line, high percentage of undocumented workers (also likely living below the poverty line), and a huge mix of both urban and rural populations. Those rankings don’t strike me at all as odd.
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Are these bot/LLM accounts? The user of the post I'm replying to and the thread parent user (@crnvbikwblcps) seem to be randomly generated sequences, both very recently created.
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Do you have data to support that?
Do you have any numbers as to why those rankings should be suspicious, or is it down to preconceived notions about people from those particular states you've met and you're projecting?
Having lived in Honolulu for several years, I'm quite surprised that Hawaii is last on the list for "financial distress".
Although maybe they're just better at leaving within their means, which is very hard when salaries are low and things are very expensive. The way of life there is generally healthier, so perhaps people don't need to do as much "retail therapy" or other terrible financial ideas.
I wonder how that list correlates to a happiness ranking. I think Hawaii was at the top of the list last time I heard a year or two ago.
Typo: I meant "living", not "leaving"