re: Artificially inflated credit scores are starting to drop nationwide

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As a former lender the standard for the entire debt industry has been 3-3.5% delinquency rate or you are not maxing out your profit by cutting opportunities. Over 3.5% and you are spending more to collect cutting profits.

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Be glad you're out of that. Serious delinquencies in credit cards was 12.31% in Q1FY2025. That's the highest since Q1FY2011. This is up from 11.35% in Q4FY2024 and reflects a 6.5% year-over-year increase.

US consumers created a lot of debt since the GFC, then put that into overdrive after COVID. Something like 33% of all consumers currently have more CC debt than they do savings.

What this (and other data) all means is that a massive chunk of GDP has been due to debt creation since the GFC, so there's likely to be a snowball effect once consumers start walking away from their debts (credit ratings drop, meaning they buy less, meaning jobs shrink, meaning more pressure for more consumers to walk away from their debts, meaning credit ratings... etc).

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Mine was 830 and then dropped to 790 last month.

I only have one credit card I pay off monthly and no debt. I haven't owed a loan in several years so my credit score balance swings wildly based on how much I spend that month and what I order because it's the only open account I've had in years. It's reallstrange how volatile it can be. We did spend a lot last month on booking vacation plans and I bought some more woodworking tools.

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Almost identical here, except I do have a truck note. My credit score has fallen between 20-30 points SINCE I paid off my mortgage. 100% on time payments for years with no new debt. If I continue to pay my entire balance on my credit card every month (I always have), why should my score go down based on how much I put on the card per month? Again, my credit score is being lowered because I’m doing everything right? Dumb.

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My parents are in the upper echelons economically--even in retirement they earned 2x what I did last year. Zero debt, multiple income streams, everything paid in full. But, for some reason, their score is 10 points lower than mine. Weird.

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Credit scores are not a measure of overall financial strength/net worth; they are a debt repayment history metric. Folks without current or recent borrowing have lower scores than someone with a substantial debt load and a perfect repayment history. So yea, a debt free multi-millionaire that could repay all your debt 10 times over, may have a lower credit score.

So if I don't pay the mortgage...