Maximum useful credit score?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Not sure if this would be a GQ or IMHO, but since I’m guessing there may not be an exact answer so I thought I’d start here…

I’ve heard in the past that credit scores above a certain point don’t really matter, and after you cross some threshold that there are no real benefits to having anything higher; is that true? For example, having a score of xxx or over will basically qualify you for whatever loans or other benefits (insurance rates, etc.) may depend on a score, and it doesn’t matter if you have an 800 or an 850, the effect would be the same. Of course I realize that credit score alone isn’t the only factor in some of these decisions, and I’m not implying that a high score would by itself qualify anyone for a huge loan or something like that, just that there may be a score that is considered “perfect”, even if its not literally the max score.

So, assuming the above is accurate, my question is how high of a score is good enough? What is the minimum score to qualify someone for the max benefits? I’ve googled this a bit, and it seems like the cutoff would be in the 720-750 range, but some of the articles I came across were a few years old, so I wonder if they might be outdated.

2

We have discussed this in related threads before. Generally speaking, a credit score of 720 will get you almost all the benefits there are and having one higher than that will give you little additional benefit. However, some people have reported seeing rare requirements for certain offers that require as high as a 750.

3

The other thing to consider is: if you’ve got a score of 800, and you then get a hard inquiry which affects your score, that might push you down 40 points (just making that figure up, I don’t know what effect it has).

That moves you from 800 to 760.

Whereas if your score was 760 to begin with, it pushes you down to 720.

720 is a decent score but as Shagnasty mentioned, not enough for some credit offers.

So basically, the higher your score is, the less likely that a small decrease would put you in another risk bucket.