News & Resources

Does hostility breed better credit?

Mar 20, 2012 Sean Albert

Travel + Leisure's America's Favorite Cities survey, which ranks 35 major cities on a variety of categories, dubbed New York the No. 1 rudest city in America. Also included in the top five were Miami, Boston, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. What's interesting to note is that residents of four of the cities also have some of the country's healthiest consumer credit reports, The Huffington Post reports. According to CreditKarma.com, the average consumer credit score is 660. What the news source found was that New Yorkers (682), Bostonians (687), Los Angeleans (684) and Washingtonians (686) all registered above-average credit. And while those numbers may not seem like huge increases, "the difference of a few points may be the thin line between approval or rejection on a credit application and the difference of thousands of dollars in interest payments," the news source states. It's suggested that the aggressive attitude many people from these cities display also translates to their ability to maintain pay off bills on time. "People in New York are constantly in a rush," manners expert Thomas P. Farley tells T+L.