Credit score

My credit union and my credit card company have the score on their website. It's visible as soon as I logon. They each use a different credit bureau for the score. Or the FICO score.

Mine is excellent, thankfully. 839. But I don't really care anymore. I don't ever plan on buying anything and having to make payments, One of the benefits of being an old guy.

 

Do note that different companies use not just different scoring methods, but different scales as well, with different upper and lower bounds.

Without specifying a particular scale, these numbers are meaningless. E.g. without naming the scale, we don't know if the numbers above are very good or excellent on some of the better known scales, or mediocre on competing scales with higher upper bounds. Yes, like vanity clothing sizes, some companies are intentionally shifting scales so that customers will get excited about seeing numbers that sound better on some other better-known scale.

Conversely, a business pushing 'credit improvement' services might (initially) push customers from a scale skewed the other way.

I never looked at any of my 'scores' until some credit card statements started providing them without asking. Having been debt-free before the end to the previous century, from a period before these scores became a common non-secret tool, I just didn't have any need to know or use them. That is, except when an insurance company was forced by the state to tell me that I didn't have the lowest possible rate due to my credit score. That led to them being forced to supply a free credit report, which revealed nothing. But they haven't dinged me for non-perfect credit since.

 

The highest score is 850. These 2 articles will put you to sleep.

https://www.myfico.com/Credit-Education/Questions/why-are-my-credit-scores-different-for-3-credit-bureaus/

What is the Highest (Perfect) Credit Score?

 

... on the traditional FICO scale. And on VantageScore too.

Other scales I find quickly have top bounds of 830, 840, 900, 925, 950, and 990.

The bottom scores also vary, from 150 to 501.

 

Ever since the Equifax beach incidence last year, I have placed credit freeze with all four major credit monitoring companies. I don't even know what' my current credit scores are, and hoping I never need to lift the freeze again.

 

Never seen 900. My banks use the traditional FICO score. I'm good with 836, just like I'm good with 50 mpg.
No need to go higher. (I'm a old cash-paying man.) But all the young people have something to shoot for.

 

i get ours free through discover. 780 i think. same problem, no debt, no payments, pay credit cards early, no interest.
we're invisible to lenders, and that's the way we like it.

 

The best credit score, in my never-to-be-humbled opinion is '0'....or no report.

Mine was 820-ish the last time I bought a house, and I have resisted the urge to look into it since my credit was frozen a few years back.
I do have Credit Karma as a tripwire, and their 'FAKO' score has me somewhere in the 800s.
I use them as a tripwire sensor and use it so seldom that I have to reset my password on every visit....


I thought that I heard where the bigs were not going to be allowed to shake people down for freezes and thaws which seems to be justice delayed. If I were king for a day, the default for everybody with an SSN and a DOB would be 'frozen' with perhaps some monetary perks for those that need to play with snakes....

 

My name was among those millions involved in the Equifax hack job. So I placed a freeze on all three credit bureau's. For whatever good that does. Probably nothing. Equifax is also supposedly monitoring things.

I guess it might be a good idea to check my free credit report every year or two. See if any strange accounts pop up on there.

 

Me too, as well as the Target data breach and one other. I do the free annual credit reports and have other triggers in place.

 

i got the letter from connecticut department of revenue saying a laptop had disappeared with all taxpayer info on it and we're giving you free credit monitoring for a year. great people, great job.

 

They're hoping that if they poke you, you'll jump up and buy something.

 

I used to get mine from discovercard.com for free also, now I just get it from my checking account for free.

When I got out of debt (school loans), and stopped using my discover card for 6 months, my credit score dipped to 0. Since I was no longer interacting with debt, there was no record to go off of so score went to 0. You figure someone who has no debt would have a greater chance to paying back a loan than someone who has a 850 score but only be able to save few hundred a month after monthly debt payments.

 

My husband's retired friend, 68 years old and retired, has a FICO score of 843. I've seen his official documents. He has no debt and a credit card that he's had since 1976. Seen that, too.

 

Mine holding steady at 836. It's not hard to do. Just live within your means; pay everything on time. Don't go nuts with credit cards. People create their own messes, and then bitch about it.

 

Mr. Wilson and I are on the exact same page here. A high credit score is the banking/loan marketplace equivalent of having a giant target attached to your chest and up-marketing you for a new and bigger loan, credit cards, and other money sucking schemes. Mind you, this is great situation if you are young, married/family and moving upscale -- accumulating them assets and having a realistic and sound plan to pay off all that debt structure (sooner than later). Yes, go and borrow as much of other people's money as you can and build those assets while you can. Really. It is the American way. I did it when I was younger, benefitted from it bigly. Along the way the score(s) were good, because I borrowed and kept it going for a good 30 years. It was tons of fun while it lasted. Then I was done with all that once it was paid down.

Funny story about a car we were buying 8 years ago (Prius Gen3)... tried to get a 50% loan from one of our banks and they said "um, no." Our collective credit scores had fallen so low they said they didn't trust us. Truth was we had paid off nearly everything by then. We just wanted to test getting a loan to jump start our credit score a bit. Never really thought they'd deny the loan. I told the bank we'd just pay cash for the thing and then moved our money out to another bank because they were so rude about how they told us we weren't worthy of a $10,000 car loan. This would be the same bank that we had just, one month earlier, paid off our mortgage to, and 5 years early. So absolutely not worthy I guess. I really don't like banks or bankers, in general.

But now, caught in the irreversible condition of being old, and a financial position of any earlier big debt only visible in our rear view mirrors -- save our next month's couple of COSTCO credit card bills, local utilities and that noisy water heater that is about to fail -- the world's lending institutions now bother other people and avoid us. It is quite a relief, actually. It is similar to not being asked to show your I.D. when buying beer because of the preponderance of white hair. I actually don't want to know what our credit scores are these days -- but they're probably now safely in the negative numbers, if that's even possible. Anyone stealing our identities might have a surprise if they try to borrow.

 

On what scale? FICO and most other scales can't go anywhere near 0, but have floors in the multiple hundreds.

Debt is not required in order to have a great credit score. Except for harvesting two purchase incentives that were boosted by financing (and very easily paid off during the 6-months-no-interest promo period), I haven't had any debt this century. My last loan, for a 1997 car, was paid off in 1998. The FICO scores shown on my Discover card statements are near the very top end of the scale, even though that card stays fallow most of the year.