Is a Perfect Credit Score Possible? It Can Be With Help From This Free Tool

Let’s face it, nobody’s perfect.

If you’re like most of us, you’ll never bowl a perfect game. You’ll never score a perfect 10 on the uneven bars.

Ah, but you can achieve a perfect credit score. You can! It’s doable.

Here’s how you do it.

What Is a Perfect Credit Score?

Let’s start with this: What are we trying to achieve, exactly?

Your credit score is based on a number of factors such as your payment history, percentage of credit limit used, length of credit history, diversity of credit, new credit and other factors. Banks and credit card companies use it to decide whether they’re willing to lend you money and what interest rates they’ll charge you.

Your score ranges from 300 to 850. The better your score, the better deal you’ll get on a mortgage, car loan or credit card.

So, if the magic number is 850, how do you get there?

You need intel. You need insight. You need insider information. To get that, get your credit score and a “credit report card” for free from Credit Sesame. It breaks down exactly what’s on your credit report in layman’s terms, how it affects your score and how to address it.

Seriously, It Can Be Done

Mike Scanlin had a good credit score but figured he’d try to get a perfect one — just for the challenge: “I wanted to get to 850 just to see if it could be done, since I didn’t know anyone who had done it.”

It took him two years of financial maneuvering to do it, but he believes anyone can repeat his feat.

Of course, Scanlin is also a 50-year-old Los Angeles venture capitalist who runs a website about investing, so he knows things that many of us don’t.

Tools like Credit Sesame are for the rest of us — people like James Cooper, a motivational speaker, who used it to raise his credit score by 277 points, from 524 all the way up to 801.

Cooper’s favorite thing about Credit Sesame is its personalization. It suggested concrete steps, based on his situation, to better manage his credit score.

“They showed me the ins and outs,” he said. “How to dot the I’s and cross the T’s.”

What It Takes to Get a Perfect Credit Score

Credit Sesame spells out the steps you’ll need to take to boost your credit — all the way to perfection:

• Pay your bills on time, every time.
• Optimize your credit utilization by signing up for the right credit cards.
• Mix up your credit use with credit cards, loans, etc.
• Get started with credit early if you can.
• Be choosy when applying for new credit — Credit Sesame will let you know your chances of being accepted!

“There’s no secret to perfect credit. All it really takes is discipline and sound financial habits,” Credit Sesame advises.

“The biggest benefit to having perfect credit is that you’ll qualify for the best possible terms. If you want to finance a car, for example, perfect credit makes it much easier to qualify for a 0% APR deal.”

Mike Brassfield ([email protected]) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. He has never, ever had a perfect credit score.