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I saw something like that also, and it makes sense there is a practical upper limit on such a thing as "crude" as a credit score, and it's not 850 (whoever decided to use such a scale anyway?).  Perfection if the enemy of good enough.

I do wonder if someone with a 750 or 725 could be a poor credit risk.  Obviously it would be possible in some extreme case, but maybe it's not that extreme.

Mine seems to bounce down after making a large purchase with a credit card, and then back up when I pay it off.  My mortgage seems to have zero impact on it.  I'm sitting on a pretty substantial real estate asset with the loan almost paid off but it doesn't seem to matter even though it's a large factor, much larger than any credit card thing, in terms of creditworthiness.  (I have a 10 year ARM, so I've been paying it down before that hits.)

I put my real estate tax on a credit card, it's a substantial amount, paid off when due, but it causes my CR to drop maybe 25 points.

I put baseball on it as well, which is another fairly large amount.  At the end of the year I have a lot of different bills coming up that I charge.

Are you not charged a convenience fee of 3% for paying property tax bill w a CC?

My county does that which is a deal breaker for using a CC to pay that bill.  I'd love the points but not at that cost. 

I could see looking at the score as a first blush, someone with a 400 means you need not look further.  But is it possible someone with a 750 could be a poor credit risk?

And it's turned into bragging rights at times since we can all access it pretty easily. 

Depends.  There again, debt-to-income ratio is a big factor as well.  I was never a loan officer so I'm just repeating some things I picked up from them 20 years ago, but in general you're probably right.  A low credit score might be a red flag, whereas a good credit score may merely mean "proceed to the next step and see if they can check some other boxes."  

If I have an 800 credit score, but low income and relatively heavy debt for my income bracket, any unforeseen happenstance could do my budget in and impede my ability to pay on a loan, making me a bad risk.  So then it could become a matter of how big and what type the loan is.  A small, unsecured loan?  I bet a lot of lenders would do it anyway.  Maybe even with bad credit.  A larger, secured loan that's going to get another lien slapped on something I "own?"  Some are still going to take that risk, maybe with higher interest rates.  A more sizeable unsecured loan, like say, a few thousand dollars?  Maybe I wouldn't be approved for that. 

Or in some cases in small towns, I've seen loan officers with authority to finalize loans without the approval of a lending committee make loans to people they know are good for it, who would never be approved anywhere else by cold analytics.  I've also seen that occasionally come back to bite them, but the theory is they're building up more goodwill in the community and generating more business in the long run.  

And in some cases--again, with lenders who have quite a bit of leeway to approve their own loans--it matters what kind of personality they have and how much they care about their track record.  I worked for a guy once who had never had a loan default and he was proud of that.  That guy wasn't going to take any risks.  Others don't care about the occasional default and will make riskier loans.  

I put my real estate tax on a credit card, it's a substantial amount, paid off when due, but it causes my CR to drop maybe 25 points.

I put baseball on it as well, which is another fairly large amount.  At the end of the year I have a lot of different bills coming up that I charge.

We put everything we can on our cards.  One gets us 6% back on groceries and streaming services, 3% on gas, which I calculated came out better for us than all the gas discount cards that are out there.  The other is a flat 2% back on everything, which we use for everything else.  Lots of cards do air travel miles, rotating categories each quarter with things like restaurants, clothing, entertainment, etc.  That stuff just doesn't fit our lifestyle so we go with the basic, boring cashback.  

It took my wife some getting used to because she's not a budget Nazi like I am.  I put it all aside and it nicely covers the Holidays for us, so we get a "free" Christmas out of it.  Nothing spectacular, but it's something.  

I worked for a guy once who had never had a loan default and he was proud of that.  That guy wasn't going to take any risks.  Others don't care about the occasional default and will make riskier loans. 

Kinda like the saying that if you've *never* missed an airline flight, you're getting to the airport too early. 

It includes an assumption that all people have the same risk tolerance and are maximizing for "least time spent waiting for their flight" which isn't always true. 

Granted, I know guys who live that way. An old boss was the type that it was almost a game how late he could wait leaving the office to go to the airport to catch a flight... Didn't want to spend an extra minute there. 

But that's not me. I absolutely HATE being late. For anything. And I have a low desire to deal with unforeseen changes--especially ones which come from my own lateness.

A few weeks ago when we went to Texas we knew we were cutting it closer than I like. We ended up leaving the house about 15 minutes later than I wanted. We hit literally ALL red lights to drop the dog off at boarding. Then we had to drive all the way up to LAX during morning traffic. We got off the 405 and traffic trying to get to the parking and then on the parking shuttle to the terminal were BRUTAL. My wife could tell I was stressed, which makes her mad because she then gets stressed, so she snipes at me for making her stressed, while I'm just hoping we get to the terminal in time to check bags. You're supposed to check bags 45 minutes before a flight. I think we were literally in between the 45th and 46th minute when we dropped them off. Once we did that, *I* could finally relax but my wife had the stress carryover and it took her a LONG time for it to pass. 

If every flight was like that for me because I was trying to cut it close such that I never waste an extra minute in an airport and thus risk missing flights? It would be excruciating and mentally exhausting and I wouldn't ever fly anywhere. 

I'd much rather get to the airport comfortably early. If it's the morning, I'll get a coffee (maybe breakfast) and read my Kindle. If it's the afternoon, I'll head to one of the terminal bars and have a beer. Some might call that "wasted" time. I call it my emotional moat to avoid unnecessary stress. 

The main thing that influences my CR seems to be how much credit I am using, based on the credit cards I have open.  So, if I cancel one card, my credit goes down and so does my CR.  

That's one thing that gets me. I had my score >800. Then my wife's car was finally paid off, and so I have no loans tracked as all three cars are now owned free and clear, and only one credit card with a balance. And my credit score dropped ~50 points.  

It seems strange that it's almost like the way to make my credit score higher would be to go take on some more debt.