I'm gonna be pigheaded and argue about this one.
First, let me explain that I don't actually think above 700 is a great score. a GOOD score is over 750. But over 700 is an OK score and, except for maybe the best possible interest rates on large purchases, my experience is that with all 3 scores over 700 you CAN get pretty much whatever you want, as long as you don't have too high an overall debt for your income level.
Only 5% of all people with scores from 700 to 749 will have a serious delinquency in a 2 year period, and such people are considered to be "low risk" when it comes to extending them credit.
Sure, you can be better than that. The figure for expected serious delinquencies among people with scores from 750 to 799 is 2%, and the figure for people from 800 and 850 is only 1%. And the people in these categories are, obviously, even lower risk than folks between 700 and 749.
But being just plain "low" risk is OK, and is pretty much always good enough to get whatever credit you might need.
Now there can be exceptions; It is mathematically possible, for example, to be just over 700 with a recent delinquency on your report, and a recent delinquency could easily scare a creditor off. But I'm talking about the "normal" type or report that has a FICO score over 700.
Let me give you an example. In late 2006 I bought a used truck that was already above the mileage that most creditors would finance, and, within about 3 months, was going to be absolutely over the age that anyone would finance. The dealer also had limited financing sources, and I had to accept a 29.9% loan. Luckily, about 2 weeks before it got too old for anyone to even look at it, I got it refinanced by a finance company at 21.9%.
After that, nobody would even consider it because it was over 10 years old and had well over 50,000 miles. Believe, me, with a 21.9% loan, I tried, including talking to firms who actually solicited my auto refinance business. In every case, with my FICO scores as high as 685, (that's probably why they were sending me all the refinancing "offers") as soon as they got the truck's details they told me it was too old AND had too many miles, and even if one of those categories had been OK, the other one would still have prevented them from touching it. And these were, mostly, finance companies, the "easiest" places to get credit.
In May I started paying my revolving way down, and by late June had it down to around 14% on my reports, and all 3 reports had finally broken 700. And a credit union, to which I didn't even belong at first, pulled Experian, which had a FICO of 701, and gave me a 5.49% refinance loan on the truck. Which is now like 11 years old, and has over 155,000 miles.
Point being, once I hit 700, they didn't care about the value of whatever the collateral was. They loaned me the money because of my credit, not because of my truck. And by the way, this particular credit union would not even let me open an account with them a little over a year and a half ago, because my credit wasn't good enough.
I wasn't saying that once you get over 700 you ought to forget about your score. What I WAS saying was that once you break 700 your score is OK, you shouldn't have trouble anymore getting whatever credit you need, and you don't have to actually worry about it like you needed to before you got over 700.
You've reached the "good" credit category as far as creditors are concerned. You're already OK credit-wise, and if you simply keep paying your bills on time, don't overuse your revolving credit, and keep paying your revolving total down by at least a little bit every month, your score is going to keep going up. There's no longer a need for analyzing every aspect of your debt, trying to decide if you'll get 2 more points by paying $100 to creditor A than you would get if you paid $110 to creditor B, trying to figure out if you refinanced a finance company loan at a bank would you end up gaining a net 4 points because you closed a finance company account or losing a net 2 points because you picked up another inquiry and opened a new account.
THAT'S what I was trying to say. Once you've gotten all 3 FICO scores above 700, you don't need to worry and over-strategize anymore. Just keep on keepin' on, and your scores will just keep getting better without any strenuous effort on your part.
