For most of modern finance, one number has quietly dictated who gets ahead and who gets left out: the credit score. It was a breakthrough when it arrived in the 1950s, becoming an elegant shortcut for a complex decision. But shortcuts age. And in a world driven by data, digital behavior, and real-time signals, the score is increasingly misaligned with how people actually live and manage money.
It can be nearly impossible to escape a history of bad credit. Credit is the amount of money you have borrowed and not yet repaid to make large purchases like medical bills, homes, property, school tuition loans, and other types of loans. A credit score is a number that represents your history of loan repayment so future creditors can determine if they will or will not loan you more money.
While past studies have explored how cancer patients' financial health influenced their risk of mortality, new research digs in deeper by zeroing in on objective data: credit scores. It found that when a cancer patient's credit score drops - regardless of where it started pre-diagnosis - odds of survival decrease drastically. The findings were presented earlier this month at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress and have not been peer-reviewed.
Millions of people are accidentally making themselves look bad to lenders. Something as simple as taking cash out on a credit card can damage your score, cost you money, and make borrowing harder. With more households carrying debt from month to month, it's more important than ever to understand how your day-to-day financial decisions affect your future.
According to the New York Fed, superprime U.S. borrowers-those with credit scores above 760-who carry unpaid student loan balances are expected to see their credit scores drop by an average of 171 points this spring.
