740+ will qualify you for all the best rates, so congratulations, you've reached the promised land!

Yes, credit utilization is one of the most powerful factors, so pay it off.

780 and 850 get the exact same best rates.

Oh yeah it’s nice, but I was just randomly curious how people got to the 850 perfection. Maybe they have a longer credit history than I do as well

Longer history, more diversity of accounts, could be any number of things.

Rates are generally the same above 720.

It's only 850 on one FICO model, not all of them. I was at 850 with FICO 8 at one point, but 760 on FICO 2.

Time (length of payment history and age of accounts) is the most important factor. For the 1-2 months before you apply for new credit, you can also practice AZEO:

> AZEO is not something you have to do every month. Only in the run up to when you need your credit score to be its highest, e.g. in the 40 days before you apply for a loan or a card.

We carry 3 credit cards; two are over 30 years old. We've financed all 5 new cars(*) we've bought. We bought a house and paid off the mortgage. And our credit score is floating around 800-820. One month one score peaked at 843.

Apparently having credit cards older than most redditors isn't enough. Having 30+ years of "perfect" history is not enough. Every time I get a credit summary, it keeps whining about not having the proper types of loans.

I'd love to hit the magic 850, but I don't care enough to game the system.

(*) -- we properly financed 3 cars. New car #4 we wrote a check for 50% and financed the other half. I wasn't emotionally ready to write a check to buy a car. I could've. Car #5, I walked into the dealership intending to write a check to pay for the car, but found out our email-ngotiated price included $500 factory financing incentive. So I played the game, asked the dealership what was the minimum I'd have to finance to get the incentive, AND could I pay it off immediately. After confirming both by reading the fine print, I financed about 1/3 and wrote a check for 2/3. Then as soon as I got the first bill, I sent them a payment in full and paid off the loan. I paid about $22 dollars in interest to get that $500 incentive.

>A friend of mine on YouTube has a perfect 850 score which is astonishing and totally awesome.

If all of her scores are 850, that would be impressive. If she has a single 850 on one of the scores that goes to 900, she still has great credit but not quite mythical.

Yeah 850 isn’t something I’m striving to get I’m fine in my upper 700’s, but curious to see how people even got to the 800’s to begin with. Thanks for your info it was very insightful on how you got to your score. This whole credit thing I find fascinating lol

Probably the case. Maybe one of the three credit bureaus are at 850 and the rest are a little lower

by the way... back in May (April?) I deliberately pushed my utilization over 30%. Temporarily my score dropped to 783, but it bounced back over 800 reasonably quickly.

My utilization rate today is at 15 percent I just checked on Experian. Not bad. You know what my greatest fear about this whole Credit thing is? Someone steals my info on the dark web and gets a card in my name and maxes it out. Now I have Lifelock and other credit monitoring to watch out for this, so I feel somewhat secure about it

The history is the big thing going the 770-810 range up to the 830s and higher.

My score was briefly 850 for a while, then I did two refis then I let my oldest credit card cancel itself (kept getting sold, I didn't activate it after getting three new cards in a year). Mine sit at 800 or so now. Nothing else changed other than my 25 year old card closing, and my oldest active account being only since 2014.

Seems really stupid, yes.

I have my doubts for various reasons and I think you should too given they seem to be an online friend who doesn't have any time to answer your questions. Regardless even with a perfect credit score you don't get 0% rates for everything especially in today's markets. It's unlikely your rates and your friends rates would be very different if all other factors except the credit score were the same since you are both in the same category.

Chasing a perfect score isn't worth it if you are already in the best rating. It's just a number to brag about at that point.

I'd rather have a 0 credit score than a perfect credit score

Credit scores aren’t a video game leader board, there is no practical reason to go out of your way to get an 850 score.

All in all, people put too much value on credit score, and not enough value on making good financial decisions. Those two items are not always in alignment. Only focusing on credit score can lead you to make bad financial choices.

> I’m sure she can go to a car dealership with a 0 % interest rate on a car loan.

Why do you think this?