Both Dave Ramsey and Ramit Sethi scold their calkers about worrying about a credit rating. In their worlds people do not buy things on credit. But isnt a credit rating used for things other than getting credit? For instance auto insurance rates? Or ?
It is used by landlords to approve a tenant, and that's completely legal AFAIK. Credit rating can be used for auto insurance in most state except the practice is banned here in California and also in Hawaii, Massachusetts and Michigan. Use of credit rating in employment also depends on state. It is heavily regulated here, it can only be used for certain jobs. I've certainly worked jobs where it would be fine to run a credit check, but it's definitely not every job. But even though most jobs don't run them, I can't imagine any job caring about whether you got the tippy top credit score though ridiculous hacks, rather than just do you tend to pay your bills on time most of the time. And if they do you probably don't want to work for them anyway.