“If you live debt free, even if you don’t carry any available lines of credit or open accounts, you should still have a credit score above 600. Not zero.”.
Not true. I just signed a mortgage for the townhouse I have been renting. Because I have not had a credit card for over forty years I had not credit score; had to get two credit cards for about a month to get a score of over 700 before any bank would look at me.
Not true. I just signed a mortgage for the townhouse I have been renting. Because I have not had a credit card for over forty years I had not credit score; had to get two credit cards for about a month to get a score of over 700 before any bank would look at me.
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Just having no credit cards would not be enough to drop you below 600 by itself. Yes, credit cards increase your actual open credit (low nor zero percentage debt on those cards) helps to raise your credit score a lot, but not having them doesn’t drop you below 600.
If you had any utility bills, and you paid them on time, you wouldn’t get a negative score from having a late payment history. This includes cell phones too.
If you did miss payments on bills in your name of any kind, that would drop you down.
Even if you completely just appeared on the scene, never had any accounts of any type (loans, bills, credit cards, etc) then your baseline should be around 600, possibly higher.