Study Shows Port St. Lucie Residents Have Most Credit Cards in U.S.

One of Florida’s fastest-growing communities, Port St. Lucie, is also number one in the nation regarding the average number of credit cards used per resident. Earlier today,the financial watchdog website WalletHub released a report titled “Cities With the Most Credit Cards“, which ranked Port St. Lucie number one in the country. Nashua, New Hampshire, came in second place, followed by Irvine, California, Garden Grove, California, and another Florida city, Cape Coral. Conversely, cities with the fewest credit cards per resident were Washington D.C., Pearl City, Hawaii, and Lincoln, Nebraska.

To determine the cities where credit card ownership is increasing the most, WalletHub analyzed its latest consumer-finance data across four key metrics. These metrics measured the average number of cards owned per person and the average number of new cards opened per person in Q4 2023, as well as the percent change in both from Q4 2022.

“Port St. Lucie, FL ranks first because residents own a lot of cards and are adding new accounts at a fast pace,” WalletHub said. “Port St. Lucie residents opened more credit cards than people in any other city during Q4 2023, at 1.45 cards on average. This represents an approximately 3.4% increase from Q4 2022. People in Port St. Lucie also own more credit cards per person (6.39) than people in all but three other cities.

The number of cards per person is 5.8% higher than it was in Q4 2022. It’s worth noting that Port St. Lucie residents have more credit cards than other people in their state. As a whole, Florida only ranks third out of the 50 states for the number of credit cards per person.”

METHODOLOGY:

In order to determine the cities with the most credit cards, WalletHub compared the 182 cities across two key dimensions: 1) Number of Cards and 2) Increase in Number of Credit Cards. We evaluated those dimensions using four relevant metrics listed below with their corresponding weights, each metric being graded on a 100-point scale.

Finally, we determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.

Number of Credit Cards – Total Points: 50

• Average Credit Cards Opened in Q4 2023: Full Weight (~25.00 Points)
• Average Credit Cards Owned in Q4 2023: Full Weight (~25.00 Points)

Increase in Number of Credit Cards – Total Points: 50

• % Change in Average New Credit Cards Opened (Q4 2023 vs. Q4 2022): Full Weight (~25.00 Points)
• % Change in Average Credit Cards Owned (Q4 2023 vs. Q4 2022): Full Weight (~25.00 Points)

Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected as of January 29, 2024 from WalletHub database.