These states have the most people in financial distress, study finds

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FILE - Studio image of a man and woman sitting at a table, planning their family budget. (Photo by Harold M. Lambert/Lambert/Getty Images)

Budgeting, bills, and bloated prices have landed many Americans in financial distress.

Financial distress "as having a credit account that is in forbearance or has its payments deferred, meaning the account holder is temporarily allowed to not make payments due to financial difficulty," according to WalletHub.

WalletHub compared all 50 states across nine metrics in six categories to find which states had the most people that were in financial distress.

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States with the most financial distress

Dig deeper:

Texas, Florida and Louisiana were the top three states that had the most people in financial distress, according to WalletHub.

In Texas, residents had the ninth-lowest average credit score in the country and the third-highest number of accounts in forbearance or with deferred payments per person.

Texans also had an increase of more than 22% in non-business bankruptcy filings in the past year, which was the sixth-highest increase in the country.

Florida had the second-highest increase in the share of people with distressed accounts at 23% and the sixth-highest overall share of people with accounts in distress, at 7.3%.

Residents in Louisiana had the third-lowest credit score in the country and about 11.8% of people also have a credit account in forbearance or with deferred payments, the highest share in the country, according to WalletHub’s analysis.

WalletHub also noted more residents in red states were in financial distress than residents in blue states.