Credit Trends
Our Credit Trends show you how you compare to other Credit Karma members. See where you stand and compare credit scores by state, age and email domain. While these comparisons are fun, they’re also an interesting way to gauge the overall credit health of Credit Karma members.
Our lives are full of numbers: phone numbers, social security numbers, birthdates, lottery numbers, lucky numbers... the list goes on. But no number says more about us than our favorite: the credit score.
Our credit score speaks of our creditworthiness, gives potential lenders a peek into our credit history, and even predicts our financial future. However, recent correlations have been drawn between credit scores and other factors saying more about us than we'd ever imagined. Here are a few examples:
According to the Insurance Information Institute, drivers with lower credit scores file 40% more claims than drivers at the higher end of the credit scale.
Forget red and blue states. Certain states also have higher credit scores than others. The Dakotas and Wisconsin lead the country while Texas and Nevada have the lowest average credit scores.
We found another intriguing credit score correlation: email address domains. Based on a sample of more than 400,000 credit scores, our data shows that there is a difference of average scores based on what email service users prefer. Interestingly, BellSouth users came out the top with a higher average, while AOL and Yahoo users had the lowest average credit scores.
What does it all mean? Not much. Switching email providers certainly won't increase or decrease your credit score. However, it seems true that people with a certain score are more likely to use a particular email provider. Why this happens is probably due to some demographic skew which then carries to the email domain. But that's not the point, we just thought it was interesting.
0 People Helped
E-mail address has something to do with credit scores? Hardly.
jlocato1's comment was:
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CK Moderator
0 People Helped
I have accounts on yahoo, gmail, mac, aol, comcast, and more... I like to try different things. I generally prefer yahoo, because I just like the way it functions better than the others. (I'm over 50 so maybe egyptor has a point.) But the real reason I use yahoo or gmail or .mac/.me (or even aol, if I must), is that it simply doesn't make sense to use an ISP specific email (such as comcast or sbcglobal, etc.) because if you decide to use a different service for whatever(!) reason, you then have to make sure you contact everyone you want to know of the change, which also means changing it on any websites, accounts, etc. where you have your email address for whatever reason. A techie friend pointed this out to me years ago, and it made perfect sense to me. I will always make sure I can afford and pay for my ISP. I'd give up food before that! But I won't use their email address. Sometimes I do use those addresses when I need to use an email for something that will largely be "junk" in my inbox. Then I just check them periodically.
In the past I had DSL, then I moved and DSL wasn't available there, so I had to use cable. If I had been using the ISP email, I'd have had to notify everyone, etc. What a pain. Makes more sense to use something that won't change, such as yahoo or gmail--especially since these days they are largely free with quite unlimited amounts of storage space. I advised my ~80-ish parents to do the same because they kept having to change emails when they changed ISP. (Yes, they use their computers a lot... Mom is relatively new to it, mostly email, but now they are asking about Facebook!) :-)
ladylea1's comment was:
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1 Person Helped
I wonder how this "Trends by Domains" will change,
since -
At&t is now powered by Yahoo?!
I guess my yahoo address was the better trend, after all.
Future10's comment was:
0 People Helped
I personally use live. I have an old yahoo e-mail and I have a gmail account I use often. I am a Marine stationed overseas, so it's hard to keep track of my credit sometimes. But I keep a steady 715+.
muunkyy's comment was:
0 People Helped
Bizarre. My score came up much lower than on ANY of the three reporting agencies' reports.
OurMomCat's comment was:
0 People Helped
I use Yahoo as my primary email. Could that have something to do with the fact that my score has dropped from 760 to 744 in two months? Nothing changed - no new credit, no late, no purchases etc. I pay my cards in full every month. Many payments are auto deduct from checking. Did my score drop because I use Yahoo???
kitty811's comment was:
No Kitty811, your email server has no effect on your score.
KK simply has used the login people used to create their KK account to make these worthless bar graphs. Fact is, many people easily created an account on yahoo or hotmail just to be able to use it as the username when they created the KK account. This is actually the approach recommended by most internet security experts when you first try out such services; the less personal information you provide at first, the better.
The email domains shown in these KK graphs are not representative of the main email domains that KK users actually use for most of their emails. The high scores seen for comcast, for example, simply tells you that comcast users are too braindead to grasp the realities of identity theft and far too dim witted to be able manage more than their one and only comcast email account. Such numbskulls have high scores, not by virtue of their mastery of finance, but rather by having stumbled into some overstaffed, overpaid government job like police officer or fireman. These morons have nothing better to do with their time than watch comcast while the rest of the nation does the real work.
submarine11's reply was:
Dropped due to the Dems still in control of 2/3rds of the Fed goverment.
deadclock's reply was:
0 People Helped
And while you're looking at email addresses, I suggest another item to look at: email names matching users' actual legal names. For example, does a match (i.e. John Smith with an email address johnsmith@gmail.com) do better than a non-match (i.e. Sally Jones with email address of prettypinkprincess924@yahoo.com)? I'm guessing that you'll find people with what I'd call grown-up email addresses (matches) have higher credit scores than those who don't.
VizillaKarma's comment was:
Review by
CK Moderator
Totally disagreed. I believe more the people become accustomed to latest technologies like new emails, emails systems, online information storing systems, if one is intelligent and smart, they will be better off not to use their name matches in their emails ids. Hence the mismatch of ids could actually do better on credit score. So this basis is totally useless, with all due respect.
madcrkrplane's reply was:
That a fine way to speculate how things may work in the future, mad, but currently older populations are far more likely to use their real names on the internet than younger populations. The reason being that they use the internet for maintaining and growing their real world contacts, either socially or for business reasons. Young populations are more likely use the internet for fun, and treat it more like a game.
zbeeblebrox's reply was:
1 Person Helped
I wonder how people with their very own domain would score.
It would be interesting if CK would add that one as well - or at least a category for all others than the ones listed so far.
Here on CK I registered with a hotmail account but I do own several domains with email accounts attached as well.
I regulary create email accounts (or an alias) when I have to provide an email address to a new vendor for the first time: today I wanted to get a car insurance quote so I created 'esurancequote @ <my.domain>' and now I am waiting to see what other senders (besides esurance) are going to spam me on that account.
Vyger's comment was:
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