(Bloomberg) -- It took Stan Kelman three years ofmonitoring and tinkering to muscle his wife’s credit score to a perfect850. “It’s a personal achievement,” says the 44-year-oldbusiness analyst and data scientist. “I’m very proud ofit.”

Anna, his wife, let him direct the strategy for managing heraccounts—whether to apply for new credit, when to ask forhigher limits, how much of those limits to draw on. Herhusband, a self-described credit card-obsessive, was alsoworking on his own record. Six months ago, when some big creditblemishes finally dropped off his report, his score reached ashigh as 842. Within a year, Kelman thinks he can reach 850,too.

Some 200 million U.S. consumers have FICO credit scores, whilejust under 3 million, or about 1.4%, have perfect 850s.That’s according to Fair Isaac Corp., the company behind the28-year-old scoring model used by lenders to predict whetheryou will pay back a loan. But over the years the numberhas become much more than that—it’s now an American totem ofsuccess or failure, hope or despair, security or risk. While thereare competing models, almost anyone with a credit card knows that anumber typically ranging between 300 and 850 holds huge swayover their financial life.

Or does it? America may finally be approaching what couldarguably be called peak credit score. This year, theaverage national FICO number is 700, just above where it stood inOctober 2006, before the run-up to our most recent financialcollapse. The ranks of “super-prime” consumers—those withscores of 800 and up—have steadily increased since2010, and now number over 41 million,more than consumers with scores of 600 orbelow.

A big reason for this is that American consumer financesare generally in good shape. While the overall level of householddebt has returned to its pre-recession peak, it remainslow when compared with income, says MarkZandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Debtservice—principal and interest payments as a percent ofincome—is at an all-time low, helped by mortgage refinancing overthe past decade.

It used to be that your credit score was a big mystery, or youhad to pay to see it. Now credit card companies can’t wait to showyou your score, for free. But those three-digit numbers you getevery month aren’t necessarily the ones lenders use. In reality,you have dozens of scores, some based on previous versions of FICOscoring models and others developed by the three big creditbureaus. And your score will vary by the lender’sindustry—mortgage, auto loan, credit card, and telecomservices.

It’s possible all this transparency has fueled our pursuitof creditworthiness. What has definitely helped is a steadydecline in payment delinquencies of more than 90 days, especiallyin real estate loans. All those negative credit entries earned inthe recession have also started to disappear from reports thanks tothe seven-year rule that helped Kelman. Meanwhile, automated billpayments are removing human error from the equation. A lull in thegrowth of new subprime accounts from early 2012 to early 2014, anda lingering reluctance on the part of consumers to seek new credithasn’t hurt, either. (Applying for more credit temporarily dingsyour score.)

To be fair, some experts see U.S. credit consciousness as beingat a post-recession inflection point. Rather thandodgy mortgage loans, however, these days the risk factoris subprime auto loans, where delinquencies have been rising forfour years.

While late credit card and mortgage payments are also startingto tick up, Zandi believes those measures “are simplyreturning to historical norms.” Looser underwriting and hard-hitconsumers in energy patches like Texas and the Dakotas are drivingsome of that. But there’s a third possible explanation: Theweakening predictive power of credit scores as consumers learn howto game the system.

“The scoring models may not be telling us the same thing thatthey have historically, because people are so focused on theirscores and working hard to get them up,” Zandi says. Thosescore-fluffing strategies are “mucking with their relationshipto the underlying credit risk.”

Ethan Dornhelm, vice president for scores and analytics at FICO,said the company sees “no evidence of score gaming.” Recentincreases in credit card delinquencies is on the banks, he said,since more low-scoring consumers are obtaining credit as lenders“aggressively compete for new card volume.”

We know our credit score sets interest rates on what we borrow,sure. But many may not realize that it also affects what cardoffers you get, what deposit utilities require, what your insurancerate will be, whether you get that rental apartment, or whatyour installment plan is for a mobile phone. In our society, it’sa three-digit number that can open or shut doors. Notsurprisingly, many hyper-competitiveconsumers obsess over it. And when Americans obsess oversomething, they start looking for an edge.

“We’ve all been raised using a grading and evaluationsystem from school through work,” says John Ulzheimer, acredit expert who has worked at FICO and Equifax Inc. “You want todo as good as possible, and as good as possible in the creditscoring world is 850.” The only number that may be more importantis your cholesterol count, he says.

The quest for the perfect credit score is “part ofour western competitive edge,” says Sarah Davies, seniorvice president of analytics and research atVantageScore Solutions, which has a scoring model thatcompetes with FICO. “Here’s a way not to keep up with theJoneses, but to get ahead.”

Your credit score has become such a popular character-meter thatthere are dating services based on them. A 2015 academicstudy found that “quality in credit scores, measured atthe time of relationship formation, are highly predictive ofsubsequent separations.” The research suggested “credit scoresreveal an individual’s relationship skill and level ofcommitment.”

As if you needed another reason to boost your score.

Members of the 850 Club can be broken into two groups.There are the super-knowledgeable tacticians trying to crackscoring algorithms, and the naturally prudent. Some are preppingfor a loan. Others are just credit-score hobbyists. Paul Chua, 40,who works at San Carlos, Calif.-based Helix, a startup focused onpersonal genomics, is one of the tacticians.

It’s almost like a video game, he says, “where people are tryingto get a good score.”

Chua learned about credit the hard way. He ruined his scoreby running up debt in college. He read up on how to fix it,went on internet forums, and eventually got his credit into goodshape—then he landed a job at consumer credit firm CreditKarma. Even with all that effort, though, the big reason for hissuccess was simple: He didn’t miss a payment for seven years.He also used at most 5% of his credit limit, since scores canbe hurt by high “utilization rates.”

Chua had an 850 score for about two months, he says, but itdropped to the 800s because he applied for a few rewardscards. Trying to get multiple cards in a fairly short period isinterpreted as a sign of potential financial trouble, but ifyou’re looking for a big-ticket item like a mortgage, scoringalgorithms will assume you’re only trying to buy one house whenseveral lenders check you out.

So let’s say you’re a good consumer, you’ve never paid late,never did anything credit rating agencies might considernaughty. Why do you only have an 810? Getting to the big leagues,let alone the magic 850, usually requires a little more effort. Insome cases, it might even help to have screwed up your credit atsome point.

All those credit cards from college that initially hurt Chua,for example, helped him down the line. That’s because he nevercut them up, creating a longer credit history and ahigher average age across his accounts. Both of those numbersfeed into the 15% or so of a FICO score based on the length ofyour credit history. A virtuous cycle develops when you have goodcredit, says Chua. More companies offer you credit, whichraises your total credit limit, which means you can make biggertransactions but still use the same percentage of your totalcredit.

Chua used to work with Kelman, ourFICO score-obsessed husband, whom he calls his“credit-card mentor.” Kelman was Credit Karma’s leadanalyst in data sciences, able to crunch a huge pool of anonymousinformation. “I had access to the credit reports of millionsof people, and you just correlate thevariables,” says Kelman.

Kelman’s own credit saga is much more complicated thanChua’s, and involved a lot more gamesmanship.

His family had arrived in America from the former SovietUnion a year before he started college and got his firstcredit card. He was dumbfounded by the concept. He describedthe card as a potent symbol of capitalism, “a rectangularbundle of joy” that at the time seemed to signal a “crowningachievement.” For about 17 years, he had great credit.

It might have stayed that way had he not charged the costof a move from New York to Silicon Valley. In 2010, he decidedto default on four credit cards, plotting out ahigh-stakes strategy: He would stop paying his cardsand then try to negotiate with issuers just before hitting 180days of non-payment. Accounting rules require credit-card companiesto write off bad debts at that point, and he figuredthey don’t like doing that.

Through perseverance, well-rehearsed tales of woe, and theunplugging of his land line to avoid collection calls,Kelman reached settlements averaging 30 cents for eachdollar he owed. His credit score, however, fell below 600.

His rebuilding effort was assisted by his diligencein paying down student loans while keeping creditcard companies at bay. It also helped that a few older cardssurvived (though his limits were cut dramatically), keeping hislong credit history intact.

Going forward, Kelman charged very little on his cards,using less than 5% of his overall limit across cards and lessthan 30% on each one. He sometimes paid his balance more thanonce a month, disputed minor inconsistencies in reports, andasked issuers for higher limits. He rarely applied fornew credit.

After two years, he had a credit limit of $40,000 anda score in the low 700s. When the seven-year-old negativeinformation fell off his report, his numbers jumped into thelow 800s. By July 12, his FICO score was just 8 points short ofperfect.

While all this strategizing can pay off, the reality is thatit’s a lot of effort. And what does a perfect 850 bring you? Verylittle that you couldn’t get with a lower score, it turns out.“There is no incremental value to having an 850 score over, say, a760 or 780,” says Ulzheimer.

Credit card expert Jason Steele contends that a stellar creditscore did help him obtain an “ultra-low rate” of 2.875% on a 5-yearadjustable rate mortgage. But that’s about it.

To get there, Steele didn’t apply for new credit inthe three months before seeking the mortgage as he knew bankswould be sensitive to any fresh applications. He also beganpaying off his card charges before the statement close date,since that’s when balances are reported to credit bureaus—a bigdeal since they’re considered long-term debt. He also chargedless on his cards.

There’s additional disappointment awaiting perfectionistswho want an 850 in perpetuity: Credit scoresfluctuate from month to month. Steele compares their obsessionwith the desire to keep a new Jeep or truck spotless.Good credit is meant to be used just like off-road vehiclesare meant to get dirty.

“You’re kind of missing the point,” he says of850-worshippers. “The point is for you to use your greatcredit to apply for really high-end premium cards with excellentsign-up bonuses, and get the lowest possible rate for otherloans.”

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