FLORIDA (352today.com) – A new report by personal finance company WalletHub calls Florida one of the top states in the nation when it comes to financially strained residents.
For the purposes of its study, WalletHub defined financial distress as “having a credit account in forbearance or with payments deferred due to financial hardship.” The analysis looked at all 50 states across nine metrics, including changes in average credit score between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026; changes in the number of bankruptcy filings in each state between March 2025 and March 2026; and percentage of residents that meet the aforementioned definition of financial distress, among others.
Florida ranked third overall in the resulting ranking of states with the most financially distressed residents.
Regarding the Sunshine State specifically, the analysis noted an alarming rise in both the number of residents with financial accounts in distress and the number of bankruptcy filings as factors that put it near the top of the list.
“Florida residents are the third-most financially distressed people in the country. In Q1 2026, Florida had the fifth-most accounts per person in financial distress, meaning accounts where the account holder was temporarily allowed to not make payments due to financial difficulty,” read WalletHub’s synopsis. “Floridians also had the second-highest increase in the share of people with distressed accounts between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, at nearly 19 percent.
“In addition, the Sunshine State had the third-highest overall share of people with accounts in distress, at nearly 8.7 percent.”
The only two states that scored higher (or lower, depending on one’s perspective) in the ranking of America’s most financially distressed states? Kansas took the top/worst spot, with Louisiana coming in at No. 2.