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
Is it just me, but doesn't the graph show that Bellsouth(which I happpn to be) has the higher score.
0 People Helped
19 and Gmail WOO!
0 People Helped
Credit scores are probably also highly correlated with IQ. I'm guessing the higher IQ folks use gmail and vice versa.
0 People Helped
This IS an interesting comparison between email accounts. I believe Yahoo is the loweset, just because it has so many users that it would take many high credit scorers to even out the multitude of poor credit scorers. Plus, yahoo mail is much more advertised than gmail. People with lower credit scores tend to take the first offer give to them (maybe not the best rate) and were maybe hasty to get into a credit/debt situation that was not in their control. Most people tend to act this way, it is human nature to trust others who are in a "position" to offer them a loan (even though the "lender" is just another human being who is working for someone else, and even themselves, not that connected to the personal lending situation).
0 People Helped
Funny, I found something similar in my line of work (lead generation), where leads with broadband ISP email addresses outperformed Gmail, Gmail outperformed Hotmail/MSN, and Hotmail/MSN outperformed Yahoo.
Someone who has a broadband ISP provider email address like Comcast has money to afford the service in the first place. It would be interesting to see how much or how little the variations vanish between email domains if you could just look at the users' connection speeds when checking in from non-work IP addresses.
20 People Helped
I purposely don't use my Cablevision e-mail. Yahoo is just a million and one times more convenient than anything else. I may not use cable forever, perhaps it will be FIOS, but I still won't use the provider's e-mail. Yahoo just makes more sense, as it is with you for life. Having said that, the study is "interesting", but I would hope that creditors would never hold email domains as "gospel". I have a 677 CK score and a 703 Fico (both Transunion). I am a proud Yahoo user. :-)
0 People Helped
could it be that people using less secure email such as yahoo and AOL fall victim to identity theft, which in turn lowers their score?

Review by
CK Moderator
20 People Helped
I rarely view my account from a public computer and "knock on wood" have not been "victimized". I use strong password techniques and it would be difficult to "guess" my password.
Yahoo, as I said, is just so much more convenient.
0 People Helped
It's very true that yahoo *tends to* attract less sophisticated computer users. I already knew this; not that it would keep me from using any e-mail address I would like (I have several) but noticing that someone has a comcast account immediately lends some degree of credibility, whereas a yahoo account inspires a slight bit of suspicion. It was interesting to see that my observation is confirmed by the chart.
0 People Helped
I use gmail, my score is pretty high as well. But I have used yahoo and hotmail in the past - the amount of garbage cluttered on those sites makes them unbearable!
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