Finances In Montana: It’s Both Good And Bad For 2023

Wallet Hub recently published a couple of stories about finances in America.  The first was a story on states with the most people in financial distress for 2023 and the second was talking about the neediest cities in America for 2024.

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Reading them both here's what really struck me.

First, The Good News:

Montana ranks 44th for having people in financial distress. That's really good.  They based the article on stats including

• residents with a change in their credit score from 2022 to 2023
• the amount of people with "accounts in distress" and how many are in that category from 2022 to 2023 (accounts in forbearance or has its payments deferred)
• change in the number of bankruptcy filings
• the word "debt" searched
• the word "loan" searched

Now The Strange And Kind Of Bad News:

We have 2 cities that made the list for neediest cities in America.

This ranking was made using economic well being and health and safety.  A LOT of factors, way too many to include in my article went into coming up with their list.  If you want to know exactly, hit the link.

What Montana Cities Are On The Neediest List?

• #112 Missoula, Montana
• #116 Billings, Montana

Montanans, In General, Are Great With Debt

Jason wrote a great article about how Montanans have the 10th best credit ratings in America.  He also wrote about how we don't take too kindly to having loads of credit cards. We HAVE them, we just don't have lots of them and use them all the time.

Why Do I Think Those Montana Towns Made The List?

Housing.  Prove me wrong.  Email me here. I'm not absolutely sure I'm right, but it would seem that they both had housing issues BEFORE the pandemic and the influx of people moving to Montana driving up rental and home prices.  Now, it's that much bigger than it was when we had normal Montana.