Has it been over a year since you’ve had any debt?

You may be part of the over 20% with no credit score.

Bad credit can be better than no credit, depending on how bad. At least with less than perfect credit you are shown to have borrowed and paid back money, and your identity is more easily verified automatically.

You do not need to pay interest or fees to maintain credit scores. Simply using a credit card once a year is typically enough to keep it open. That charge can be small and paid in full after the statement is generated (on or before due date) which will not cause any interest to accrue. Personally, I’d suggest keeping two or three open where you’re legally responsible. Pay day loans, rent, utilities, and products like Affirm; often do not show up on your credit report unless something goes very wrong.

You could pay off a house, a car, have no debt, and plenty of money in the bank; and have more trouble getting credit and/or worse terms than someone struggling that has some derogatory items on their credit. The models that drive the scores that drive our financial world need recent data. No data doesn’t necessarily mean you were doing awesome. And it certainly doesn’t verify your identity. Just like most things, models work well for the majority, meaning they’re built for the typical situation and perform poorly in handling the tails of a population distribution. Even the awesome outliers are troublesome.

For one reason or another, over 20% of Americans have no credit scores. For most, that’s avoidable, and I’d suggest avoiding it.