It’s the holiday shopping season, when many Region residents often find themselves reaching for the plastic at malls and shopping centers.
Northwest Indiana residents are carrying between $2,100 and $2,900 in credit card debt on average, a new study by the personal finance startup SmartAsset found.
Residents in Lake County carry $2,468 in credit card debt per capita, which is about 9.7 percent of their income and 9.5 percent of their wealth, the study found. Porter County residents are even deeper in debt with about $2,881 in credit card debt per capita, accounting for 9.4 percent of their income and 7.7 percent of their average wealth. And Jasper County residents owe about $2,900 per capita.
People in Lake, Porter and Jasper counties have higher credit card debt loads than the rest of Indiana, where residents have an average credit card debt of $2,351 per capita, according to the SmartAsset study.
In LaPorte County, the per capita credit card debt is just $2,125, which is about 8.7 percent of average income and 6.9 percent of wealth per capita.
Suburban Indianapolis counties like Hendricks, Hancock, Boone and Hamilton were saddled with some of the highest credit card debt in the state of Indiana, with Hamilton County residents, for instance, owing more than $4,500 per capita.
