Chris Taylor for Current

How to achieve a perfect credit score, and why you don’t really need it

As Lynnette Khlafani-Cox looked at her credit score back in 2022, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The number that popped up on her screen: 850.

She is a renowned money expert known as ‘The Money Coach’ and is the author of books like “Zero Debt,” so, to others, that might not be surprising. But Khalfani-Cox remembers very well just 20 years earlier, when she was struggling with over $100,000 in credit-card bills.

Now, after years of being hyperdiligent about her credit, she had finally reached the magic number: 850, the highest you can go in the FICO scoring system .

“I even took screenshots,” she laughs. “It definitely gives you bragging rights.”

Khalfani-Cox is hardly alone

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