If you have credit cards, you might also have credit card debt.
But if you live in the Bay Area, where salaries are higher and access to financial advice is more prevalent than elsewhere in the country, the chances are good that you might be able to pay off your credit card debt faster than many other Americans.
That’s the conclusion from a study conducted by personal finance site WalletHub, which came out with its ranking of U.S. cities with the most- and least-sustainable credit card debt. WalletHub said it looked at data from credit bureau TransUnion, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve Bank to determine the median credit card debt of individuals in more than 2,500 American cities, and how long it takes, on average for people to pay off their credit cards.
According to the company, Cupertino tops the list of cities with the shortest credit card payoff timeline, with residents needing 12 months and eight days to pay down the median credit card debt of $2,408. Right on Cupertino’s heels are Sunnyvale, where it takes 13 months and 20 days for individuals to pay off the city’s $2,028 median credit card debt, and Mountain View, where the median credit card debt of $2,453 takes 15 months and 18 days to erase.
Other Bay Area cities ranking among the best places when it comes to paying off credit cards include Foster City, Los Altos, Saratoga, Fremont, Santa Clara and Palo Alto. WalletHub said it takes residents of those cities around 18 months to pay off their credit card debts. Cities such as San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland also ranked highly on WalletHub’s list.
Local financial advisers say a combination of factors in the region make managing credit card debt easier around the Bay Area than in other parts of the country.
“Salaries in a lot of places here are higher than elsewhere,” said Taylor Richardson, a registered senior client associate with Merrill Lynch in Oakland. “When people have a higher income capacity, even a substantially higher credit card debt becomes easier to manage.”
At Corinthian Wealth Management in San Jose, certified financial planner Dave Samuels said he thinks that Bay Area residents also benefit from being, on the whole, better educated and having more access to services that provide financial services and advice than the national average .
“I have clients that tell me their companies bring in counselors to help them with their finances,” Samuels said. “This area also has a high concentration of financial planners who are all preaching the same thing about why it’s important to clear out as much debt as you can. So, there are a lot of ways to get help with getting rid of things like credit card debt.”
WalletHub said that nationally, Americans began 2019 with more than $1 trillion in credit card debt, and it expects another $80 billion in credit card debt to be tacked on top of that amount by the end of the year. In comparison to the relatively short times it takes Bay Area residents to pay off their credit cards, residents of other American cities need numerous years to wipe out their credit card debt.
It takes a person more than 11 years to pay off accounts in Park City, Utah, where median credit card debt is $5,796. The timeline is roughly the same in Magnolia, Texas, where the median credit card debt is $3,717.
At the bottom of WalletHub’s list was Jacksonville, North Carolina, where WalletHub said residents need 138 months and 17 days to pay off their median credit card debt of $3,435.
Odysseas Papadimitriou, chief executive of WalletHub, said that clearing out credit card debt as soon a possible should remain a priority regardless of where a person lives.
“People trying to get out from under credit card debt should start by making a plan to pay off as much as they can afford each month in order to get debt-free as quickly as possible,” Papadimitriou said, in a statement. “Simply having a plan will make the task more digestible.”