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Do you need a perfect or 800 score? This has been asked often and many responses have been NO, as from the eyes of most banks, anything 760 of above, is does not matter. My story. I had a PERFCT 850 score and worked to keep it high. In Feb 2017 my wife INTENTINALLY set my house on fire and caused 260K of structural and personal property damage. Because I live in Ohio, my Allstate insurance company refused to pay for the damamge (The fire was Intentinally set by a houshold member) so I was out of luck, except for the fact they had to pay the mortage off and my wife/ex wife had to pay 80K to me in restitition to stay out of jail. But with all of that, I was still in hardship, as I needed to repair my house and had just lost my job. With all that being said, I was able to use my excellant credit situation to repair my home and get a HELOC to cover the credit card debt. If I had a 760 credit score when this all happened, it would have been a lot more difficult to recover from my situation. I look at a 850 score as having a "Buffer" in case you really need to use it.
Wow, not sure what to say to this. Guess this would definitely fall under the term irreconcilable differences. :-)
@ronron66 wrote:Do you need a perfect or 800 score? This has been asked often and many responses have been NO, as from the eyes of most banks, anything 760 of above, is does not matter. My story. I had a PERFCT 850 score and worked to keep it high. In Feb 2017 my wife INTENTINALLY set my house on fire and caused 260K of structural and personal property damage. Because I live in Ohio, my Allstate insurance company refused to pay for the damamge (The fire was Intentinally set by a houshold member) so I was out of luck, except for the fact they had to pay the mortage off and my wife/ex wife had to pay 80K to me in restitition to stay out of jail. But with all of that, I was still in hardship, as I needed to repair my house and had just lost my job. With all that being said, I was able to use my excellant credit situation to repair my home and get a HELOC to cover the credit card debt. If I had a 760 credit score when this all happened, it would have been a lot more difficult to recover from my situation. I look at a 850 score as having a "Buffer" in case you really need to use it.
I agree with you. I think it's worthwhile to try to keep one's credit scores as high as possible. It's not always predictable when you're going to need them.
@ronron66 wrote:Do you need a perfect or 800 score? This has been asked often and many responses have been NO, as from the eyes of most banks, anything 760 of above, is does not matter. My story. I had a PERFCT 850 score and worked to keep it high. In Feb 2017 my wife INTENTINALLY set my house on fire and caused 260K of structural and personal property damage. Because I live in Ohio, my Allstate insurance company refused to pay for the damamge (The fire was Intentinally set by a houshold member) so I was out of luck, except for the fact they had to pay the mortage off and my wife/ex wife had to pay 80K to me in restitition to stay out of jail. But with all of that, I was still in hardship, as I needed to repair my house and had just lost my job. With all that being said, I was able to use my excellant credit situation to repair my home and get a HELOC to cover the credit card debt. If I had a 760 credit score when this all happened, it would have been a lot more difficult to recover from my situation. I look at a 850 score as having a "Buffer" in case you really need to use it.
There are literally no words. Thank goodness, indeed, you had 850 scores across the board; but I would like to believe that 760-780 scores would have gotten you the same loans, CLs, and rates.
It's good news that you were able to rebuild and get your life back on track.
At this point in time I definitely do not need 800 scores...now if I had 780 scores I would say yes. Actually, I am probably OK without credit due to age, bad health, and savings. I would be more bored if I did not have these scores to set goals for.
At the risk of veering off topic for a moment, can you share what your wife's motiviation was in setting the house on fire?
Let's keep on topic that is relevant to the initial discussion (i.e. Do you need a perfect or 800 score)
There's definitely no harm in having a score in the 800s, and the OP's may be an extreme example as to why, but in his case it was a life saver. Life throws a lot of curveballs at us, and even though my wife may never burn my house down one never knows what can happen. Just losing a job could make an outstanding credit rating come in handy.
@FinStar wrote:Let's keep on topic that is relevant to the initial discussion (i.e. Do you need a perfect or 800 score)
Ok. No, you don't need a perfect 800 score.
She set my shirts on fire beacue I threw out some EMPTY boxes of hers. She said since I destroyed her "things" she would destroy mine. It was a walk in closet where the shirts were and it set EVERYTHING in the closet on fire. Caused 140K in structural damage and 90K in personal damage. I still had a mortage so Allsate HAD to cover the lien holders and pay them off. SHE had to pay 90K to stay out of jail. If this had happend in 26 other states other than Ohio, the insurance company would have been obligated to cover (innocent spouse doctrine )
But Ohio does not have such rule.