Minnesota Cities Ranked By Credit Scores

Originally settled by the pre-historic hunter gatherers, Native Americans, French Traders, and then Europeans, the area that is now known as Minnesota became an official possession of a new American nation with the acquisition of the Northwestern Territory following the War of American Independence.

Decades later, the fully-fledged United States named that area the Minnesota Territory; shortly thereafter, the territory reached statehood in the year of 1858.

Minnesota’s economic origins were grounded in the fur trade, mining or iron exports, and logging; these industries stemmed from the settlement era and development stages throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries. In today’s modern economy, Minnesota banks on health care, banking services, and the computer technology industries as economic drivers.

Sporting a 3.7 percent unemployment rate, Minnesota has over 3 million workers, and its Registered Nursing and health care industries are experiencing significant growth.

At any rate, here at LendEDU, we were interested to get a gauge of Minnesota’s financial health as a whole. Like a few studies before this one, we have often compared the average consumer credit score between towns and cities within a state. Today, Minnesota is up on the list.

We believe that credit score is a fairly established gauge of financial health stemming from consistent financial responsibility. So, like before, we ranked the towns of Minnesota by credit score. Scroll down to check out the rank list and interactive map.

This report drew from two different datasets, Onboard Informatics’ city level dataset and Experian’s Premier Aggregated Credit Statistics (PACS) dataset. From Onboard, we pulled ZIP™¹ codes, city names, county names, and population. With Experian’s PACS, we pulled ZIP™ codes and the average VantageScore®² 3.0 rating (referred to as credit score for convenience).

ZIP™ codes were used to match city, county, and population data with corresponding credit score data. The result was a full list of ZIP™ codes in Minnesota with the relevant information mentioned earlier, ready to be processed.

Since multiple cities had multiple ZIP™ codes and thus multiple credit scores, a simplified list without ZIP™ codes was formulated by aggregating the data by city name and county. The multiple credit scores for cities with multiple ZIP™ codes were averaged together, weighting each credit score by its respective ZIP Code™ population.

After the aggregation, the list constituted uniquely named locations in Minnesota with one credit score each. A population threshold of 5,000 was used to phase out low population areas; then, the remaining cities were ranked by credit score, highest to lowest.

The top 150 cities made the cut. The original listing included over 800 locations within Minnesota.

1. Experian is a nonexclusive full-service provider licensee of the United States Postal Service®. The following trademarks are owned by the United States Postal Service®: ZIP and ZIP Code. The price for Experian’s services is not established, controlled, or approved by the United States Postal Service.

2. VantageScore® is a registered trademark of VantageScore Solutions, LLC.