So what is your FICO credit score?
We’ll use the Experian ranges for the poll
0 voters
According to Experian the ranges are allocated across Americans as:
Very Poor 16%
Fair 17%
Good 21%
Very Good 25%
Excellent 21%
I would expect that this group will skew higher than the national averages.
Plus the high end will be the main ones interested in reading the OP to begin with. It’s the opposite of all those reviews of things you buy online. Only the 50 people who are pissed off bother to write anything. The 14,000 people who are satisfied have no reason to say anything.
Midway’s area code, Baby!
Banks and credit card companies ask ME for money.
That’s how important I am.
I was at the tip top, until I paid off my mortgage. Now without that loan, I’ve dropped down to the lower 800’s
Depending on which bank website I use, my composite score is between 812-830. That 18-point spread bothers me.
StG
Mine wavers around between 785-95 to maybe 10ish over 800*, so I chose the latter option. The poll should maybe have been more granular toward the 700+ range.
*I just checked FICO and I’m 799 atm. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
No poll choice for “I don’t know; I’ve never checked”?
That’s a good point: the poll currently shows ~70% of respondents are 800+, which is unlikely and makes me wonder if there’s sample bias: folk with >800 mostly responding to the poll where high-ish and middle-ish respondents don’t know their credit score and don’t care so don’t vote. And maybe folks with low scores know/respond because it’s a concern.
It’s been a few years since the last time my score has been less than 800. It never shows as higher than 810, though. Perhaps I need to take on some more “good debt” before it budges.
I’m honestly not sure what people who are under 640 have done wrong. I had two medical bills so late that they went to collection and occasional late payments before that and it still only took a year or so after paying the bills off and making on time payments to get to the mid-700s.
I’m in the Very Good range, and really all I’ve done wrong is to have not much credit history. I went a LONG time without any credit cards or sole credit at all. The house was in both our names but my my husband was the money-earner so he’s listed first. For some reason having excellent mortgage repayment is less of a positive than having poor repayment is a negative - if that makes sense.
I started to build my credit and then my husband had a horrific accident a few years ago. We had medical bills, no income other than LTD, and my lovely new credit plans got swamped by the need to pay bills. It wasn’t non-payment that kept my score low, it’s the ratio of how much credit is used plus the relatively short history. I’ve never been late with payments and was paying them off well, and now covid has spiked it again (layoff, not illness). I’m still paying things on time but barely over the minimum, and effing Chase reduced my credit limit from 15k to 4k, which is about $500 more than what I owe them. That tanked my score, and I’m still sorting that out with them.
I have no idea what is is now but it was 820 five years ago when I bought my house.
Mine is around 810. Used to be higher, but now I only have two credit cards (never a carry-forward balance) and that brought it down some after we paid off the mortgage four years ago. At this point, we don’t care what it is since we’ll probably never need to use it again. We’ll buy our retirement property with cash (we’ve already bought vehicles with cash) now that all our former mortgage money is saved. Our credits are locked and hopefully we never have to go through the process of unlocking them.
Yeah, when we finally get to a point where it doesn’t matter anymore, my score is almost perfect.
I think it’s more likely that SDMB is not representative of the population of America. The board skews older (I’m 33 and I feel downright young here), liberal, and middle to upper class.
I used to be in the low 600s or maybe high 500s once upon a time. Multiple bills in collections and a defaulted credit card. Back in the 800+ range now but it took a long time (and change of personal fortunes) since I had to wait for all that stuff to drop off the credit report.
As others noted, I assume once you get down in that range, you just stop checking. You know your credit is shit and there’s no reason to bother with whether it’s 580 or 620 – the point is that the only people extending credit are predatory lenders. Once you’re up in the 700s, you’re thinking about mortgages or financing a car and it makes sense to keep an eye on that stuff.
That was me too. Fresh out of college and making peanuts to start. Credit cards I cannot pay, behind on rent, defaulting on student loans, etc. I finally got a decent paying job and got everything into good standing. I don’t know what my credit was then (I didn’t try to use it for many, many years). 20 years later and great credit 
In my entire lifetime I have had 4 credit cards (2 remaining), one consolidated student loan, one vehicle loan, and one martgage. I’m 50.
I was at 620 for a bit in my late 20s. My cards were maxed out ($7000) and I had a three or four month streak there where i didn’t pay the credit card bills. I didn’t have collections after me that I remember, but my rating wasn’t great. I paid everything off quite easily once I got back to working in the US and making US money, and my score rebounded to 720 in a year or so. I’m now at 819 last time I had my numbers pulled. My wife is 849.
Mine is always around 820, plus or minus 10 points. The only reason I even know it is because every time it changes Barclays or Citibank, I can’t remember which one (I have credit cards through both) sends a large-type announcement in my email in box: YOUR CREDIT SCORE HAS CHANGED!!!
I know, big whoop, since it’s totally irrelevant to my life at this point, but for some reason I always hit the button to learn more, and go to the little graph showing my current score and how it has wandered up and down by a few points over the last year or so.
The fact I even bother to check must mean I’m very, very bored. Or easily amused.
I think that’s absolutely the case, but still: I’m 58, make very good money, have a car loan, a mortgage and two credit cards I always pay off, and I’m at 799. I’ve never missed a payment on anything, ever. I find it ridiculously unlikely that 80% of the Dope has an 800+ score when I don’t (well, at the moment, I may be 801 next week). So sampling (especially self-sampling) bias seems pretty certain. That or folks rounding up.