Life along the San Antonio riverwalk, or on the sandy beaches of Miami, might look like a dream.
But it comes at a cost.
San Antonio, the Miami area, which includes Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Houston, Los Angeles and Dallas have the highest “debt burden” in the U.S., a new study released Wednesday by credit-card website CreditCards.com found.
To find those figures, the site found the average credit-card debt per card holder, according to the credit agency Experian EXPN, +0.00% and compared it to the median income per resident in the largest U.S. cities.
Card holders in San Antonio had an average of $7,070 in credit-card debt, it found. If they spent 15% of their median incomes on their credit-card debt, it would take 22 months to pay it, and it would collect $911 in interest. It would take card holders in the Miami area 21 months to pay their debt, resulting in $814 in interest.
Experian takes a “snapshot” of debt during the month, so it’s unclear how many people will eventually pay it off during that month, or let it linger. But given that the median household income in the U.S. is just over $50,000, it’s safe to say that paying off such high balances every month for these households would be a struggle.
Indeed, high debt burdens and low wages go hand-in-hand, said Matt Schulz, a senior industry analyst at CreditCards.com. “Even though people with a lot of money have debt too, it’s a lot harder to pay that debt when you don’t have the money,” he said. “Life is expensive in 2018.” The U.S. currently has its highest total credit-card debt ever, totaling more than $1 trillion.
The major cities with the lowest debt burden were Seattle, Washington, D.C., Boston, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Higher salaries in those cities helped, Schulz said. In San Francisco, it would take citizens just 13 months to pay their debt, collecting $495 in interest. Wages and the cost of living have risen in Seattle due to Amazon’s AMZN, +3.80% HQ being based there.
Higher credit scores and low ratio of credit-card debt to income are also related. Minnesotans have the highest average credit scores of any U.S. state, according to Experian, with average VantageScores of 709. In contrast, Texans have average scores of 656. Higher credit scores can help consumers get lower interest rates on credit cards and loans, and help them to qualify for a mortgage.