What We Accidentally Learned By Having an Indeterminable Credit Score

While our culture is obsessed with credit scores, we never understood the hype. We’ve never had an app to keep tabs on our scores and only knew what they were when we applied for our mortgage. While a good credit score was important in that situation, it wasn’t a test we prepped to ace. A 700 versus 800 score didn’t matter much to us. Our focus was on becoming debt free and generating wealth to retire. Recently, however, we discovered my husband had an indeterminable credit score. It wasn’t terrible or 0—we couldn’t find a record of one for him at all. Below, we cover what we accidentally learned by having an indeterminable credit score to highlight when it’s helpful to have a credit score and what to do to build one if you’re invisible to the Big Brother credit bureaus.

• An indeterminable credit score is when you don’t have a credit history, not when you have a 0 credit score.
• There are certain situations (getting a mortgage, setting up utilities, etc.) where having a good credit score can save you money and time.
• It’s hard to get a credit score when you don’t have one, an ugly Catch-22 of the system.
• A few free options exist to help you build a credit score when you’re starting out or reestablishing credit, such as secured credit cards and specialty credit building debit cards.

The One Credit Card Family

Credit card debt is an enormous problem in today’s culture. In the summer of 2023, Dr. Evil had his pinkie pressed to the corner of his mouth and pronounced, “Why have billions when you can have trillions? No, wait millions!” But the damage was done. Credit card debt had already hit an all-time high of $1 trillion.

Even Americans with high credit scores of 720+ and six-figure incomes had credit card debt. (1) While the COVID-19 pandemic was phasing out, the credit card debt pandemic continued to rage on.

We’re no strangers to financial struggles, so I resolved at a young age to avoid credit card debt like the plague. Not credit card usage, but credit card debt. I’m all for saving up credit card rewards to fund my Black Friday spending habits, but not at the cost of carrying a balance and paying a deathly interest rate of 20%-30%. That’s the opposite of financial freedom.

To help protect myself, I put boundaries in place with credit cards. While the average American has about four credit cards in their wallet (2), I vowed to only ever have one.

I also kept the limit on my singular credit card to my monthly take-home pay. That way, I always had the means to pay off my balance, no matter what. When the credit card company tried to increase it as a “favor” to me, I told them to back that truck up and put it back, please. I did not need their generosity.

When we got married, we kept the credit card with the best rewards, which happened to be mine. I added my husband to the account, then we closed my husband’s card.

Authorized Users Versus Joint Accounts

Fast forward to a few months ago. We went to increase our credit limit to adjust it to our take-home pay, something we hadn’t bothered to do in almost a decade. We expected the change to go through within a week. Instead, we got a letter in the mail stating they denied the increase.

Well, that’s odd, I thought. There must be a glitch in The Matrix. I rang up the credit card company, not-so-patiently insisted five times that I wanted to “speak to a representative!” and explained the situation to the rep. She informed me that my income wasn’t high enough for the credit limit increase we requested.

Considering the credit limit was still less than what we bring home in the month, I asked her how that was possible. She informed me that my husband’s income didn’t factor into their decision, only mine. “But he’s an owner on the account,” I told her. I gave her his name to verify.

Then she dropped a newsflash—he is an authorized user on the account, but not an owner.

Well, easy enough. I asked her to add him as an owner. He had, after all, been on the account for almost a decade.

No can do! In order to do that, we needed to reapply and open an entirely new card.

I thanked her for her time and hung up. If they were going to play hardball, then maybe it was time to take a break in our relationship. I’m not proud to admit it, but my eyes had already been wandering, searching for better perks elsewhere. The Wells Fargo cash card offered 2x the rewards than our current card did and had a $200 sign-on bonus after the first few months. If we were going to go through the hassle of unfreezing our credit and applying for a new card, then we were going to invite a different girl to the dance.

Only, the Wells Fargo cash card, it turns out, isn’t available as a joint account. They didn’t offer any decent cash rewards cards with a joint account option.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

The Indeterminable Credit Score

We decided, against my decade old decree, to become a two credit card household. My husband would open the Wells Fargo card and we’d put the majority of our purchases on it for the 2% cash back. We’d leave the autopay bills on my card for the hassle factor of not having to change them.

My husband signed up through the Wells Fargo website, and we waited for the card to arrive in the mail. Instead, we got another letter in the mail. So sorry, but we couldn’t determine your credit score. Since you don’t have a Wells Fargo account with us, no dice! Try again later!

Seriously WTF at this point.

We figured there was an error in the pause of the credit freeze, so he called up the credit bureaus only to realize he didn’t have a credit score.

But how is that possible? The credit card did not count toward his credit score as an authorized user only. We have bills in his name, but they don’t report out payment history to the bureaus, so he didn’t credit for them either.

The cake is a lie, my friends. While companies may use your credit score to determine eligibility to use their services, paying bills monthly to them doesn’t automatically build a credit score.

But he had a corporate credit card at his two previous jobs. Where’s the record of that? We were always told accounts stay on your credit history for seven years.

That’s apparently only the case if you continue to use credit.

Without any open revolving credit, my husband was a black hole in the credit ether. Since Wells Fargo told us he would have been eligible with a Wells Fargo bank account, we went back to our bank (the provider for our previous card) and told them we’d had a change of heart and wanted to get back together. I know, very Ross and Rachel of us. It’s not a proud moment. My husband applied for the same cash rewards credit card, but in his name.

The Idiocracy of the Credit Score

We expected a card to show up in the mail within a week. But, you guessed it, we got a letter instead. We felt like Dumbledore was trying to send us a message. Owls and a half-giant were going to show up at any minute.

It didn’t matter that the bank knew our income and our track record. They had almost two decades of payment history on the credit card we already had with them.

Wealth and income have no bearing on your credit score. Bottom line: no credit score, no credit card.

The absurdity was not lost on us. We haven’t summited the FIRE mountain yet, but we’ve built up a decent net worth over the past decade.

Companies don’t care. Why should they worry about how much money you have? They only care if you can mostly pay your multiple debts on time.

Why Bother With a Credit Score

If the system is so messed up, why buy in?

Some people don’t. If you’ve heard of Dave Ramsey and his Baby Steps, you likely know that he loves his indeterminable credit score. One cornerstone of his brand is being deathly allergic to debt, cutting up all your credit cards, and not even sneezing anywhere near one.

We agree with the sentiment of treating debt like a virus that has the potential to wreck your life if you don’t take it seriously, but you can have a credit score without carrying debt. Opting out of the system worked for my husband for years, but there are situations where having a credit score can save you from the headaches highlighted above, as well as money. And we’re all about saving money where we can.

• Getting a mortgage: If you’re looking to purchase and finance a new home, one of the first things the lender is going to do is run your credit score to determine what interest rate they’ll offer you. The higher your credit score, the less you’re likely to pay in interest. While we’d love for you to pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible, even if you pay it off in a few years, you’ll still rack up thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in interest. The lower your interest rate, the less you’ll pay to the bank to borrow their money. With an indeterminable credit score, you’re restricted to manual underwriting, a service not all lenders offer that usually comes with a higher interest rate.
• Deposits for utilities: When you move or change utility providers (electric, gas, water/sewer, etc.), they’ll likely run your credit score as well. If you have a good credit score, they’ll likely wave security deposits. We aren’t calling anyone a crook, but we’ve been in enough situations where we felt like Orlando Jones in Evolution—”Take the leg!”—dealing with the hassle of getting our own money back. Not having to mess with deposits is a big plus.
• Rental applications: While homeowners renting out a room in their house or renting their only rental property out will likely forego a background check, a lot of the larger companies who manage real estate, including apartment buildings, can run a credit check as part of their application process. While having an indeterminable credit score might not disqualify you from renting with them, it might cause a lot of extra conversations back and forth. And some places might not want the hassle compared to easier applications, which can limit where you can rent.
• Securing an auto loan: While we’d love for you to buy your car in cash, we realize this isn’t possible for everyone, especially when they’re just starting on their financial freedom journey and discovering the concept of sinking funds. Similar to mortgages, people with better credit scores get better interest rates when they apply for an auto loan.
• Applying for a job: Not all jobs or industries check your credit score during the application and interviewing process, but some do. We don’t have a lot of firsthand experience in this area, but from what we’ve heard, it sounds like it’s industry dependent. Banking institutions, for example, will want to check how good you are with handling your own money before they let you handle theirs.
• Insurance premiums: Insurance company may check your credit when you request a quote to determine what policy premiums they will charge.
• Getting a new credit card: see the sob saga above.

Building a Credit Score When You Have No Credit Score

‘Member (I double dog dare you to watch the Member Berries episode of South Park and not say remember like ‘member’ for the rest of your days) back when you applied for your first job? Every company wanted to know what work experience you had. You needed work experience to get a job, but couldn’t get a job without work experience. It was a twisted Catch-22.

Getting a credit score when you have indeterminable credit is a lot like that. You need a credit score to apply for a credit card or loan, but you can’t build a credit score without a credit card or loan.

We’ve taken what we learned from our exhausting recent experience (write what you know, they say) to compile a few options:

• Get a secure credit card: Most credit cards are unsecured, thus the issuer wants to make sure you aren’t a flight risk before extending you credit. There are other cards called secured credit cards, however, that you can get without a credit score. Many of these have annual fees, so watch out for that. You don’t want to pay for the privilege of having to deal with the rules of their messed up system.
• Get a debit card that builds credit: This is the route that we took, even though they’re targeted to college students. This card links to your bank account. Your credit limit is determined by your daily account balance. It sets up an autopay at the end of every day to draft that day’s charges from your bank account. The difference, though, is that they report the transactions to the credit bureaus so that you can build your credit score to graduate to a “big boy” card. Many of these do not charge annual fees.

The Perk of Having an Indeterminable Credit Score

While we were going through the whole credit card debacle, my husband found a silver lining I thought I’d share as we close out this article. While it was a pain in the ass trying to get a credit card without a credit score, this applies across the board. If he had that much trouble legally getting credit in his own name, it’s likely more trouble than it’s worth to steal his identity.