What Does It Take to “Kill” Your Credit Score?
The FICO score of the average American is anywhere between 600 and 800 – with the median set at 723. Those lucky few with a score of 850 (the ‘perfect’ FICO score) fight to keep their finances in check.
But what about those in the other end of the spectrum? What does a person need to do to reach the lowest scores of 300 to 499?
Opening a bunch of credit cards, maxing them out as soon as possible, filing for bankruptcy the very next day and then applying for more credit cards is one way to rapidly sink a credit score, says Jeanine Skowronski of MainStreet.
Skowronski adds that a user can really hit a rock-bottom credit score of 300 is to possess a very brief credit history and pull out one type of loan within that brief credit history – like credit cards, for example.
The most recent FICO score breakdown from Bankrate is 2006; showing 13% of all Americans had a score exceeding 800 while a mere 2% were in the 300-499 score range.
The breakdown was, of course, five years old and recorded just before the recession hit the nation. It would not be an exaggeration to say that today’s values would be pretty different from what they were in 2006.