Northern states have the winning scores

The best and worst states for credit scores in 2019 – research. Source: shutterstock.com

Having a good credit score is a sign of good financial health. We all know that reducing your debt, and not spending beyond what you can afford can help increase your credit score.

According to FitSmallBusiness?research, good credit scores are not evenly distributed across the US. The quality of education tends to be higher in the North, which results in more responsible decision-making, and often, higher incomes. Southerners tend to suffer from bad personal credit due to poorly ranked educational systems and a heavy dependence on government aid. Southerners also tend to have higher bankruptcy filing rates than northerners. These intriguing correlations prompted the editors to analyze other location-specific factors that might affect credit scores. Writers and editors researched financial, social, personal and environmental factors for each state.

FitSmallBusiness used these weighted baseline metrics to factor into their analysis:

• Cost of Living (10 percent);
• Median Household Income (10 percent);
• Quality of public education (10 percent);
• Percent of residents with a bachelor’s degree (10 percent);
• Unemployment rates (10 percent);
• Average debt per person (10 percent);
• Bankruptcies per 100,000 residents (10 percent);
• Median age of residents (10 percent);
• State spending on public assistance (10 percent);
• Marital status (10 percent).

SEE ALSO:?How to improve your credit score