The average credit score of a prime borrower is 767—here’s how much income and debt they have

[gdale6]

Using data from credit bureau Experian, CNBC Select provides a snapshot of what the average prime borrower looks like.

https://www.cnbc.com/select/prime-borrower-breakdown/

[AllZero]

Thank you for sharing the information!

[blindambition]

This was a very interesting analysis. I'm assuming Experian was providing model 8. I fall into that category, with lowest being 769, but only $1863 in debt. That average debt is surprising.

[Brian_Earl_Spilner]

I like how half of the article is an ad to apply for cards, halfway through. That's some mighty fine journalism there.

[sammydavidjr]

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@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:

I like how half of the article is an ad to apply for cards, halfway through. That's some mighty fine journalism there.

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That's the price of free news: when people started to expect news to be a free service, this is what they inadvertently asked for. News now serves the advertisers who pay for it, not consumers.

Interestingly -- even though this content is clearly advertorial (hence the advertiser disclosure at the top), not all links to credit card applications would earn CNBC a commission: the link in the article to the Chase Sapphire Preferred earns a commission through Creditcards.com affiliate program (I have stripped the link of all the tracking parameters), but the link to the CapitalOne offer is not a tracking link at the moment and would not earn CNBC a commission. Following a bunch of links to other articles, it looks like CNBC often includes non-sponsored products into their content, which is unusual for this kind of advertorial news format: there are many links to CapOne and other products (FirstTech) that don't earn commissions. That almost never happens on the NerdWallets or TPG's of the world, who generally only include sponsored products in their content.

[cashorcharge]

Thanks for sharing. Interesting the amount of student debt out there if this truly represents their "average" consumer 

[Anonymous]

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@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:

I like how half of the article is an ad to apply for cards, halfway through. That's some mighty fine journalism there.

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Also half way down "It may come off as surprising..." Sometimes things we say out loud are not really standard English unfortunately. 

[sammydavidjr]

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@cashorcharge wrote:

Thanks for sharing. Interesting the amount of student debt out there if this truly represents their "average" consumer 

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The number does make sense. Experian claims it is the (average) balance of the average prime consumer -- not of all consumers. But the number is consistent with other sources that generally report $30,000 as the average amount borrowed by the class of 2019. That amount is higher ($39,000) in the case of students at for-profit colleges, and skyrockets in the case of graduate students ($71,000).

For-profit student loans are by far the ones with the highest default rates, so it's unlikely that those students are the ones ending up in the prime consumer pool. The ones with loans for graduate school are the ones most likely to be in the prime consumer pool, elevating the average from $30,000 (total student average) to $37,700 (prime consumer average).

[M_Smart007]

Thanks for posting

[Anonymous]

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@blindambition wrote:

This was a very interesting analysis. I'm assuming Experian was providing model 8. I fall into that category, with lowest being 769, but only $1863 in debt. That average debt is surprising.

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Yeah I am sitting here with less than $20K income, $500 in debt, and my FICO 8s run 782-800. We are definitely outliers 😂