Are We Throwing Away Too Much Money In Utah?

We hear a lot about the financial security of Utah. By the Utah Constitution, the budget is required to be balanced and the government must live within its means. U.S. News and World Report has come out with a ranking of the “Best States” and Utah came in first overall.

It came in with high marks in education, economy, and fiscal stability.

By the way, as an aside here, I sometimes wonder how those who do the rankings come up with the numbers they do. I looked at the rankings of Utah in the metrics that U.S. News and World Report used at putting this list together, and Utah wasn't first in any metric. The best we could do was the number 2 ranking for education, which I'm sure will surprise many.

Anyway, Utah did well in these rankings, and I think we could argue that the state is fairly responsible in the spending of public funds.

That's great for Utah, but what about Utahns? Household debt continues to rise at alarming rate. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, household debt grew by $93 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024 and U.S. household debt now stands at a staggering $18.04 trillion (although that pales compared to the federal government debt of over $36.6 trillion).

Here in Utah, however, we seem to be more hesitant to spend irresponsibly. Cheapism recently reported on a study by Socially Powerful listing the most “financially irresponsible” states in the U.S.

How did Utah, or in this case the people of Utah do? Again, in looking at the numbers, I have no idea how they come up with the rankings, but according to the report, Utah shows up as the 34^th financially irresponsible state, and I suppose that makes us the 16^th financially responsible state. While that makes us a far cry from Washington State, dubbed the most financially irresponsible state in the report, our neighbors in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana are less irresponsible in spending than we are.

I expect it's because we spend to much on Funeral Potatoes and Green Jello.