Personal Finance: Ask the Experts: Sacramento ranks in Top 50 in U.S. big-city credit scores

Personal Finance: Ask the Experts

Get advice on money matters from The Bee's Claudia Buck and a panel of local experts

February 22, 2013

Sacramento ranks in Top 50 in U.S. big-city credit scores

OK, we didn't make the Top 10. But residents of the greater Sacramento region did pretty well in a recent national ranking of average credit scores.

According to TransUnion, one of the major credit reporting bureaus, Sacramento logged in at No. 34 among 100 of the biggest metropolitan regions. Our average score? 674

That's not quite as robust as the San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara area, which nabbed the country's top spot with a score of 700, followed by San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont at 696. That's based on TransUnion's range of 501 (poor) to 990 (excellent).

The others in the Top 10 were Madison, Wis.; Honolulu, Hawaii; Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn.; Bridgeport/Stamford/Norwalk, Conn.; Boston/Cambridge; Oxnard/Thousand Oaks/Ventura; Portland/South Portland, Maine; and Seattle/Tacoma/Bellevue in Washington state.

And because we know you want to know: The worst average credit scores were almost all in southern states: Memphis, Tenn.; Columbia, S.C.; Jackson, Miss.; El Paso, Texas; Baton Rouge, La. Those scores ranged between 638 and 651. In the middle of the worst was Las Vegas, with an average credit score of 651.

The rankings were based on 215 million "active credit" users, those with credit cards, mortgages, auto loans or other credit history.

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Claudia Buck is The Sacramento Bee's personal finance columnist. Read all her columns here. Contact her at cbuck@sacbee.com

Terri Carpenter

Terri Carpenter offers advice on job hunting, retraining and career counseling. Carpenter works at Sacramento Works Inc., the career and job training arm of the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency (SETA). With 15 years in the field, she has hands-on experience with everyone from first-time job seekers to career professionals seeking advice after a layoff or looking for a mid-career change. Ask her a question.

Carlena Tapella

Carlena Tapella is a partner in the law firm of Webb & Tapella Law Corp. in Sacramento. The firm specializes in estate planning and probate, such as estates, trusts, conservatorships and litigation. She is a past president of the Sacramento County Bar Association's Estate Planning & Probate Section. Ask her a question.

Kimberly Foss, certified financial planner, is the founder of Empyrion Wealth Management in Roseville. With nearly 30 years in the financial industry, her clients include women in transition, small business owners, retirees and "pre-retirees." Ask her a question.

Gregory Burke, a CPA and tax expert with John Waddell & Co. in Sacramento since 1984, worked as an IRS tax auditor for six years. He’s a past chairman of the California Society of CPAs. Ask him a question.

Daniel Tahara takes your questions about California taxes. Tahara, a spokesman for the state Franchise Tax Board, has 10 years of experience as a tax auditor. Ask him a question.