[srvmshr]

Slightly OT: how long does it take to get a credit score of 750+ typically?

Someone I know who recently moved to US, claims his less-than-a-year credit line is already at 770. It sounds a bit dubious but I would like to hear some validation about it. For e.g. it took me 4 years (admittedly on a junior researcher salary) to get to 780, so it surprised me.

[seanmcdirmid]

Immigrants get some kind of weird break on their credit history. My wife is a new immigrant, and she has higher credit than me even though our financial history has been intertwined ever since she came here. On the other hand, I got dinged a bit for not using any American-based credit for the 11 years I was out of country: we got married when I was living abroad, and I checked our credit scores when we moved to the states.

[srvmshr]

The way I look at it, likely seems based on some autoregressive type adaptive model. So having a couple of years of not using definitely dings it down. The score flattens off to some lower value. You keep using it well, pay back on time as good kid - you keep getting higher number. You wean off credit or stop using it - they tone it down.

But without spending thousands and repaying on- or before-time consistently over few financial quarters, how do some people manage to get so close to 800?

(Then, this is either a loophole or some kind of gaming the credit system ? This would be very exciting to understand, if it is)