Quote:
Originally Posted by John 070
I know what you're saying, but short of paying late, why would anyone have a credit score below 800?
My wife almost dealt only via cash, before she met me. Meaning, she has only used credit cards since 2008? Yet her FICO is 830. One of the negatives was actually never having had an installment loan for a long duration.
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Not much really, if you have a couple credit cards and they're a couple years old, even if you never use them there's no reason to not have a score above 800.
Not having an installment loan for a long duration, as far as I know, won't actually hurt your score as it's mainly a metric used to measure how well you handle revolving debt, but lenders will take into account things outside of your actual score, such as like you mentioned, long term installment debt.
Having, say a mortgage you've had for several years with no missed or late payments (FYI, on your credit report, a payment isn't counted as missed or late unless it's 30 days or more past due, so they give you some leeway on forgetting to make a payment) won't help your score nearly as much as handling credit cards, but lenders will see the mortgage as a plus when reviewing your creditworthiness.