Finance
Where are people under the most financial stress? See the list of top 10 American cities
US economy masks credit crisis as debt hits millions
Despite the overall health of the US economy, there are growing concerns as Americans face record-high credit card debt.
unbranded – Newsworthy
Chicago and Houston rank as the cities with the most people in financial distress, according to a new report from the personal finance site WalletHub.
The analysis ranked 100 large cities on several metrics of financial duress, including bankruptcy filings, credit scores and accounts in forbearance over money troubles.
Researchers also tabulated how often people in each city searched the internet for “debt” or “loans,” a measure of financial concern.
“The search index is a good indicator of people who are struggling but maybe haven’t taken action to try to get out of debt just yet,” said Cassandra Happe, a WalletHub analyst.
Chicago, Houston, New York and Los Angeles rank highest for citizens in financial duress
New York and Los Angeles ranked third and fourth on the financial distress list. Boise, Idaho, ranked last − which means that city has the fewest citizens in financial peril.
To control for each city’s size, the ranking emphasized rates of distress over raw numbers.
The report comes at a moment when Americans are spending more, borrowing more and saving less.
Credit card debt, an increasingly perilous form of borrowing, reached a record $1.13 trillion at the end of last year.
The personal savings rate, the share of income that savers sock away, was 3.8% in January, down from about 7% before the COVID-19 pandemic.
People are falling behind in their finances amid a surge in interest rates and consumer prices.
“As inflation kicked in, people spent more,” said Mike Croxson, CEO of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. “But they didn’t have free cash flow anymore, so a lot of people began using unsecured debt,” borrowing on their credit cards.
Inflation peaked at a 40-year high of 9.1% in summer 2022. Prices continue to creep up.
In an aggressive campaign to tamp down inflation, the Fed raised its key short-term interest rate from near zero to a 22-year high of 5.25% to 5.5% between March 2022 and July 2023.
Inflation and rising interest rates are pinching urban consumers
Inflation is vexing consumers in several cities that sit near the top of the new WalletHub ranking, researchers said.
“The rise in inflation, and just cost of goods in general, has been playing a big role in what we’ve been seeing in the past year or so,” Happe said. “A lot of people have turned to credit cards and loans just to fill that gap.”
Chicago, the city with the most citizens in financial distress, ranked 6th on another recent WalletHub list of cities with the biggest inflation problems. Houston ranked 10th on that list, among 23 metropolitan areas. Houston prices rose 4.5% in the past year, and Chicago prices rose 3.3%, the report said.
Of the 100 cities WalletHub studied, Chicago had the largest increase in the share of citizens with credit accounts in distress, a nearly 30% bump from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the fourth quarter of 2023.
That means a growing number of Chicagoans were allowed to skip payments because of financial difficulty, with their accounts placed in forbearance or deferral.
Chicago also had one of the highest rates of search interest in “debt” and “loans,” a sign that residents are already in debt, seeking to borrow or searching for debt counseling.
“The good news is, people are raising their hand and looking for help,” said Croxson of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.
Houstonians, too, are spending a lot of time online searching for loans or debt relief. Houston ranked relatively high for its share of residents with accounts in financial distress, more than 8% of the population.
Recession risk? Americans are saving less and spending more.
Which are the top 10 cities for residents in financial trouble?
Here are the other cities ranked in the top 10 by WalletHub for citizens in financial distress:
3. New York. The city tied for first (with Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles) for search interest in “loans” and debt.” New York ranked sixth among large cities for rising bankruptcy filings between 2022 and 2023.
4. Los Angeles. Angelenos are spending a lot of time searching online about debt. The city also ranks poorly on credit scores, meaning many Angelenos have weak or weakening credit.
5. Dallas. The city ranks high for a year-to-year rise in bankruptcy filings and for search interest in debt and loans. In an earlier report, WalletHub ranked Dallas first in the nation for rising inflation.
6. Las Vegas. Sin City ranks high on several measures of consumer distress: weak credit scores, residents with accounts in distress, rising bankruptcy filings and people searching online about debt.
7. San Antonio, Texas. The city ranks high for residents with accounts in distress and for year-to-year rise in bankruptcy filings.
8. Atlanta. The city is tied with Dallas (and other cities) for fifth place in the ranking for frequency of online searches about debt and loans.
9. Riverside, California. Riverside ranks high for online searches about debt.
10. Jacksonville, Florida. Many residents have credit accounts in distress. The city ranks high for internet searches about debt.
Finance
Aerodrome Finance Hit by ‘Front-End’ Attack, Users Urged to Avoid Main Domain
Aerodrome Finance, a leading decentralized exchange on Coinbase’s Base network with $400 million in total value locked, was targeted in a front-end attack late Friday, prompting urgent warnings for users to avoid its primary domains.
The incident appears to be a DNS hijacking of Aerodrome’s centralized domains, which allowed attackers to reroute users to lookalike phishing sites designed to trick them into signing malicious wallet transactions to separate them from their funds. Users are advised to instead rely on Aerodrome’s decentralized domains. Aerodrome has asked My.box, the domain provider, to contact them over a potential exploit of their systems.
These attacks do not compromise the underlying smart contracts, which manage user funds and protocol logic on-chain. At the time of writing, it’s unconfirmed whether the attack has led to any losses or how many users have been affected. Liquidity pools and protocol treasuries remain intact, according to Aerodrome.
Aerodrome’s team has been posting real-time updates on X, urging users not to access the compromised domains, aerodrome.finance and aerodrome.box, and instead use decentralized ENS mirrors like aero.drome.eth.limo. To reduce risk, the team recommends revoking recent token approvals using tools like Revoke.cash and avoiding signing any transactions from unverified domains.
New attack
Aerodrome has experienced similar front-end attacks before, including two in late 2023 that resulted in approximately $300,000 in user losses.
This latest attack comes just days after Aerodrome announced a merger with Velodrome, consolidating liquidity across Base and Optimism under the new “Aero” ecosystem. Despite the disruption, the AERO token price remained stable at around $0.67, up 2% over the last 24 hours.
The investigation is ongoing.
Finance
Incredible year-long spending experiment exposes mistakes you’re probably making
Financial behaviour specialist Emma Edwards, founder of The Broke Generation, is sharing her radical personal finance experiment: a whole year without buying a single item of clothing.
No new outfits, no second-hand finds, not even rentals. What began as a no-buy challenge soon became a powerful lesson in self-worth, resilience, and the surprising freedom of living with less.
In the exclusive extract below, Emma shares the six buying patterns we get trapped into thinking we actually need.
RELATED
The impact of our consumption habits creates an environment where we’re cornered from every angle. We have a collection of clothes that don’t work together, don’t make us feel good and don’t allow us to express ourselves the way we want to, which leaves us looking externally for what we’re not getting. The problem is, when we look externally, we buy more and more of the same.
Unravelling that idea of what can happen when we’re in a ‘yes’ state, a state of openness to consumption even though our intentions might suggest otherwise, got me curious about some of the unhelpful buying cycles I’d been stuck in. I really leaned into understanding how I ended up with the wardrobe I currently had, and what I could learn from the mistakes I made over and over again.
I realised that if I could establish the mistakes I was making and the ways I was buying the wrong things, I’d stop feeling compelled to buy more and more over time. Here are some of the patterns I uncovered in my wardrobe, and that I’ve seen in others’ too.
Once I liked something in one colour (often black), I’d giddily run out and buy it in another colour, thinking I was making some kind of ultra-smart decision and capitalising on what I loved. I’m going to give you a piece of advice now that I hope you’ll remember for many years. If you ever utter the words ‘I’m going to go and get this in another colour’ – run. It’s a trap. You probably won’t like the other colour, and it’ll just sit in your wardrobe and collect dust.
There are certain things in my wardrobe that I struggled to wear confidently outside of one specific outfit silo. Usually, this is a sure-fire sign that I’d bought it in a very specific context, like copying or replicating an outfit I’d seen someone else wear.
Finance
Financing Sports’ Future: Private Credit Steps Into the Arena
Today’s guest column is by Joseph Glatt, co-chair of the global Private Credit Group at Paul, Weiss.
The business of sports has evolved into one of the most sophisticated capital markets in the world. Franchises that once relied on wealthy patrons now operate as global enterprises with complex balance sheets, diversified revenue streams and brand portfolios that span continents. Behind the scenes, a quiet transformation is taking place. Private credit has become the financing engine powering the next phase of the industry’s growth.
For decades, the financial architecture of sports was narrow. Teams depended on a mix of owner equity, bank loans and broadcast advances. That model worked when sports was seasonal, media rights were centralized, and stadiums were used a few dozen times a year.
Today the business is more complicated. Digital engagement has replaced ticket sales as the primary growth driver, broadcast rights are fragmented across platforms, and venues have become year-round entertainment ecosystems. Private credit brings structure, speed and sophistication to a business that is increasingly complex and ever-evolving.
The appeal is obvious. Sports franchises have matured from passion assets into performance assets. Media rights, sponsorships, premium seating, licensing and real estate all provide recurring cash flows—a profile that looks less like entertainment and more like infrastructure. For credit investors searching for yield with tangible downside protection, it’s a natural fit.
What distinguishes the current wave of sports lending is its focus on assets. Lenders are financing discrete pieces of the ecosystem rather than entire teams—broadcast receivables, naming rights, arena redevelopment or ancillary real estate. A stadium backed by long-term contracts and naming agreements can support senior debt that behaves much like project finance. The economics are stable, the security is visible, and the exposure is detached from game outcomes. It’s a structural rather than sentimental approach to sports finance.
This shift has attracted institutional capital on a scale that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Pension funds, insurers and global asset managers now view sports as a legitimate component of their private credit portfolios. The logic is straightforward. The sector offers infrastructure-like cash flows with entertainment-driven growth. European football clubs have refinanced legacy debt with private credit facilities. North American franchises have used direct lending to fund media rights and working-capital needs. Even emerging leagues and women’s sports organizations are turning to private lenders to build facilities and extend reach. The flow of capital is both a cause and a consequence of the sector’s institutionalization.
The sophistication of these transactions reflects a growing recognition that sports carries unique risks. Revenues can fluctuate with team performance or media cycles, and valuations can move with public sentiment.
The best lenders manage this through structure rather than pricing. Deals often include covenants tied to attendance, sponsorship renewals or season-ticket deposits. Some of them link pricing to revenue performance or secure cross-collateralization between real estate and media income. The emphasis is on aligning capital with the rhythm of the underlying business, not imposing a one-size-fits-all template.
The opportunity extends beyond the professional leagues that dominate headlines. Collegiate athletics, youth sports and ancillary service providers are entering a commercial era of their own.
The legalization of name, image and likeness rights has turned college programs into fully commercial enterprises that now require working capital, facilities financing and sponsorship advances. Private lenders can design structures suited to that environment—secured against receivables, ticket income or local partnerships—where traditional financing models fall short.
Youth and amateur sports tell a similar story. The sector generates tens of billions of dollars in annual spending, yet capital formation remains fragmented. Financing of complexes, tournaments and training facilities have become scalable credit opportunities, driven by durable demand rather than speculation.
Real estate has also become inseparable from the business of sports. Stadiums are now anchors of mixed-use developments that include hotels, retail and housing. Teams are monetizing their brands across hospitality, content and data ventures. That convergence between physical and intangible assets creates a dual source of collateral. A stadium’s concrete and steel can be valued like infrastructure, while its media contracts and licensing revenue resemble corporate cash flows. Private credit thrives in precisely this intersection, where structure can integrate both sides of the balance sheet.
This new market is maturing quickly. The challenge now is discipline. Not every team or league deserves institutional credit. The fundamentals must be right: diversified revenue, credible governance and transparent capital structures. The most capable lenders operate more like strategic partners than passive financiers. They help management teams optimize balance sheets, monetize non-core assets and think creatively about liquidity. The value in these relationships lies in partnership, not just pricing.
Looking ahead, the next decade of sports capital will likely involve consolidation and securitization. Portfolios of sports-backed loans may be packaged into rated vehicles, widening access to institutional investors. Cross-border ownership will further globalize the ecosystem, blending European clubs, American franchises and Middle Eastern sovereign funds into a single capital network. That will require not just financial innovation but also regulatory fluency and geopolitical awareness.
Private credit’s entry into sports is not a passing trend. It marks a structural evolution in how capital supports one of the world’s most powerful industries. Sports is now a platform business, and platform businesses demand flexible, sophisticated financing.
The investors leading this transformation think not in seasons but in cycles. They understand that the scoreboard measures only part of the game. The real competition is for capital efficiency, and those who master it will define the future of sports finance.
Glatt has over 25 years of experience in private practice and in-house at one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers, with a particular focus on complex transactions, strategic product innovation and capital raising for asset management firms and financial institutions.
-
Business6 days ago
Fire survivors can use this new portal to rebuild faster and save money
-
World1 week agoVideo: Russia’s First A.I. Humanoid Robot Crashes Into the Tech Scene
-
World4 days agoFrance and Germany support simplification push for digital rules
-
News5 days agoCourt documents shed light on Indiana shooting that sparked stand-your-ground debate
-
World1 week ago2% of Russian global oil supply affected following Ukrainian attack
-
World5 days agoCalls for answers grow over Canada’s interrogation of Israel critic
-
Austin, TX1 week agoWoman dies after vehicle veers off road, hits her at East Austin bus stop
-
Indianapolis, IN1 week ago
Here is how Rethink Coalition envisions future improvements to I-65/I-70 South split