Tennessee among top U.S. states with people in financial distress, study says. Here's what that means.

Tennessee is among the top five states in the country with the most amount of people in financial distress, a new study from WalletHub shows.

According to WalletHub, an account in distress is defined as a credit account that is in forbearance or has its payments delayed, meaning the account holder is temporarily allowed to not make payments due to financial difficulty.

The Volunteer State ranked as No. 4 with a total score of 52.25, coming behind Michigan, Texas, and Nevada. According to the study, Tennessee ranked high when it came to the number of people with accounts in distress and the average number of accounts in distress. Data also showed that Tennesseans showed high interest in search terms such as "debt" and loans."

Here are the full findings of the study.

States with the most amount of people in financial distress

1. Michigan, total score 59.91
2. Texas, total score 56.15
3. Nevada, total score 55.15
4. Tennessee, total score 52.25
5. Rhode Island, total score 51.47
6. Georgia, total score 51.31
7. Louisiana, total score 50.47
8. North Carolina, total score 49. 66
9. Mississippi, total score 49.33
10. New York, total score 49.25

States with the least amount of people in financial distress

1. Massachusetts, total score 32.11
2. Wyoming, total score 31.96
3. Oregon, total score 31.93
4. Maine, total score 29.91
5. Nebraska, total score 29.63
6. Wisconsin, total score 27.11
7. Vermont, total score 26.87
8. Connecticut, total score 25.67
9. Iowa, total score 28.83
10. New Hampshire, total score 21.71

Methodology

In order to determine the states with the most and least amount of people in financial distress, WalletHub compared 50 states across nine metrics in six categories, each weighted at 16.66 total points:

• Credit score
• People with accounts in distress
• Average number of accounts in distress
• Change in number of bankruptcy filings from March 2023 to March 2024
• "Debt" search interest index
• "Loans" search interest index

WalletHub defined an account in distress as one which either is in forbearance or has its payments delayed.

WalletHub then determined the weighted average across all metrics to calculate an overall score for each state and used the resulting scores to rank-order the states. Information was sourced from WalletHub's own data, as well as the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, Transunion, and Google Trends.

Diana Leyva covers trending news and service journalism for The Tennessean. Contact her at Dleyva@gannett.com or follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @_leyvadiana

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee among top U.S. states with people in financial distress, study says. Here's what that means.