Dan,
I can say I have seen hundreds of credit reports over the last few years and have only seen 2 with scores over 800.
One was an elderly lady in Florida with a score of 801 that really had very little activity on her credit report.
The other was my brother in law who wanted me to pull his credit to see what his score was. He had a 820 score. A very frugal individual who paid cash for almost every thing. I tried to convince him that his score was bad being that high and that he should lend me some money to bring his score down a little. But he wouldn’t fall for it.
i thought your score in part depended on having open accounts and paying your bills. paying cash for everytihng seems like it would not help the score. very odd…
You don’t want to maintain a zero balance on your credit cards. They report that as a negative point on your score. They want to see open, revolving credit, not paid off accounts. Generally no more than 10-25% of the available credit is what they want for optimal favorable credit reporting.