Millennial Car Debt: The 5 Cities With the Most Debt for Generation
By Wade Thiel
According to new info from LendingTree, Millennials don’t just have student loan debt. They’re also strapped with a lot of car debt, paying too much for their cars.
Everyone knows that avocado-toast-eating-student-loan-debt-complaining Millennials don’t like cars, right? Well, it seems they’re still buying them, and that means they’re also adding car debt to their list of gripes. Especially, in certain parts of the country.
LendingTree analyzed data from 100 of the largest metropolitan areas in the country and ranked the results by the most car debt to the least car debt. Some of the cities with the largest amount of Millennial auto loan debt may surprise you.
I reached out to the lead analysts of the study and they said the following about the surprising data:
"“What surprised the analysts is the size of the gap in millennial auto debt between car-dependent metros. And that wealth and income appeared to not be the strongest indicators.” – Jennifer Jones, Autos Expert at Lending Tree"
Her colleague went on to say the following.
"“We all know that there are cultural differences around cars, depending on where people live, but we were surprised to see how big it is between different cities where residents heavily rely on cars as their means of transportation. Both the metros at the top and bottom of our lists are not known for vibrant public transportation, yet millennials clearly approach car buying and car loans very differently and local income levels don’t seem to be a factor in that. Wealthy metros appear at the top and bottom of our list, as do poorer ones.” – Kali McFadden, Senior Research Analyst at LendingTree"
With that said, here’s a look at the top five cities with the highest automotive loan debt for Millennials. Four of the five are in Texas. I guess things really are bigger there.