A new study by the online loan marketplace LendingTree identifies San Diego is the most “maxed out” metropolitan area for credit card debt, with an average balance of $6,629.

The study released Wednesday found San Diego residents have used almost a third of their available credit, and 18 percent have at least one card maxed-out.

While San Diego ranked first, Los Angeles was close behind.

“With the holidays around the corner, the lure of minimum payments can let debt linger for much longer than necessary, with interest accruing along the way,” said Brian Karimzad, vice president of research at LendingTree. He advised moving debt to a lower rate card or using a personal loan to pay it off.

Lending Tree said credit card balances nationwide have grown to almost $800 billion, the highest since 2009 as the Great Recession began.

The company analyzed a sample of more than a million anonymous LendingTree users in the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas to create a “maxed-out score” of between 0 to 100 for each metro.

San Diego had a near-maximum score of 98, followed by Los Angeles at 93 and San Antonio at 92.

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