One year post discharge, what is your credit score?

[kl030505]

Time is the only thing that can get you to 800 or higher and using, but paying off credit frequently. My MIL has never paid anything late in her life, paid off her mortgage a while ago, etc and I'd venture to say her credit score is not much higher than 700 something because she never uses credit.

But, there's nothing except vanity to suggest you need a score at 800 or more. Once you hit 750, you've gotten the best rates available. Anything over that is just gravy.

[jp2861]

Even my mother...who has NEVER (when I say never, I mean clean as a whistle!!) been late on anything...has a mortgage that she paid off approx. 5 years ago after 30 years......has had her same credit card with a 15,000 limit that she pays in full each months for 10+ years. She probably applies for one or two things every couple of years only...and does not have any store credit cards except for Sears and JC Penney..

She has lived at the same address for 40 years and has had the same employer for 20. Her debt to income ratio is very low as the only debt they have is their Tahoe.

You name anything that you can that would give someone a high score and she has it! But her score is only 730...she just checked it the other day for the heck of it.

So I don't really know what one would do to get their score higher? My friend that is a mortgage broker said he has only see score greater than 800 one or two times in the last 10 years.

As someone else posted anything over 750 or so will get someone the best offers from lenders.

As far as getting her score higher: as crazy as it sounds, staying in debt to various types of lenders will jack it up. Retail auto, mortgage, credit card, retail store card, gas card, etc.

To me it's one of the ridiculous parts of the credit scoring process, but the more you owe...and stay current on...to various lenders and types of credit...will improve a score.

There are other factors weighed but it doesn't appear that the whole credit scoring process is in favor of the consumer. I guess we just do the best we can and live with the results.