Credit score survey: 1 in 4 people too stressed to check their score

• 1 in 4 people are too stressed to check their credit score
• Rent is starting to count in credit scores, people’s most requested fix
• Most people surveyed say their credit score misses the full story

This year, rental payment history is moving from the margins of mortgage lending into the score itself. In April 2026, the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that Fannie Mae would accept VantageScore 4.0, a model that builds rent payments into the credit score rather than treating them as a supplemental underwriting input, with historical score data published on July 1. A new survey of 1,000 U.S. adults commissioned by Independent Lending captures the demand side of that change.

Just 19% of respondents said they check their credit score regularly and feel in control of it. Some 27% avoid looking at the number altogether because of the stress it causes. And asked what single change they would make to how creditworthiness is judged, the top answer was counting the rent and utility bills they already pay.

The picture that emerges is of people governed by a number they distrust and would rather not face, even as the system begins, slowly, to see them more fully. One note for reading the data: the sample skews female and lower income, detailed in the methodology below.

Key findings 

• 70% of adults surveyed have delayed or changed a major life decision because of housing costs
• 12% have turned down or avoided a job that would have required relocating
• 63% are not confident they can buy a home within the next two years
• 30% don’t expect to ever own a home, and 73% see homeownership as distant or impossible
• 69% have cut back on something to save for a home
• 60% say housing affordability is a significant or enormous source of financial stress, rising to 71% among parents with children under 18
• 38% hold the federal government most responsible for the affordability crisis, while explanations favored by housing economists barely register 

Only 1 in 5 respondents feels in control of their credit score

The credit score was designed to be a neutral measurement, a shorthand lenders could trust. For the people being measured, neutrality is hard to find. Just 19% of respondents said they check their score regularly and feel in control of it.

The other side of that ledger is crowded. 22% check regularly but feel anxious about what they see. 27% avoid looking altogether because it causes them stress. 18% don’t know their current score at all, and another 14% rarely think about or manage it.

Add those groups up and 67% of respondents describe a relationship with their credit score that ranges from uneasy to estranged. The number that governs their access to housing and borrowing is one most of them would rather not face. 

27% avoid checking their credit score because of the stress

Avoidance is the finding that should stop journalists mid-scroll. Some 27% of respondents say they specifically avoid checking their credit score because of the stress it causes. That group is larger than the share who feel in control.

The pressure concentrates where budgets are tightest. Avoidance peaks among Millennials at 30% and among parents with children under 18 at 35%, compared with 24% of respondents with no children at home.

This pattern reads less like indifference than like dread. These are people navigating rent, childcare and rising grocery bills who know the number matters. Looking at it has simply become one more source of anxiety in an already stretched month, so they don’t.

Nearly 3 in 10 say a falling score would deeply affect their self-worth

Asked how a significant drop in their credit score would affect their sense of financial identity or self-worth, nearly three in ten respondents, 29%, said a great deal. Including those who said somewhat, the figure reaches 62%. Only 19% said it wouldn’t affect them at all.

Women in the sample carry the weight more heavily than men, at 65% versus 56%.

That’s a striking admission about a number that was never meant to measure character. Somewhere along the way, a lending risk metric became a proxy for personal worth, and most respondents now experience it that way. When the score falls, it lands as a judgment as much as a lost approval.

Nearly half put necessities on credit cards regularly or occasionally

The self-worth question gets sharper when you look at why scores are under pressure in the first place. Some 46% of respondents say rising costs pushed them to put basics like groceries, gas or utilities on credit cards regularly or occasionally in the past year. 19% do it regularly and describe it as a normal part of managing expenses. Counting those who did so rarely, only in a genuine emergency, the figure rises to 63%.

Parents with children under 18 are hit hardest at 59%, against 42% of respondents with no children at home. Among Gen Z the figure is 54%.

The survey data lands close to national reporting: Bankrate’s 2026 Credit Card Debt Report found 55% of U.S. adults were using credit cards as a financial lifeline for necessities, and 47% of cardholders carry a balance. Every one of those balances feeds back into the score, which means the cost of getting through the month is often a lower number at the end of it.

Three-quarters say the score doesn’t tell the truth about them

Given all that, the verdict respondents hand down on the system itself follows a certain logic. Only 24% said their credit score very accurately reflects their true financial health and responsibility. The remaining 76% see gaps: 39% say it captures part of the story but misses important context, 22% say it penalizes people for circumstances beyond their control and 15% call it a deeply flawed and outdated system.

The judgment gets harsher when hardship enters the picture. Asked how fairly the credit system treats people who have experienced job loss, medical debt or unemployment, 69% said somewhat or very unfairly. Nearly a third, 32%, chose very unfairly. Just 7% said the system treats them very fairly.

Respondents with some college or vocational training were the most critical, with 77% calling the system unfair, compared with 63% of bachelor’s degree holders. Income follows a similar shape rather than tracking raw hardship: the unfairness verdict peaks in the middle bands, at 73% of households earning $25,000 to $49,999 and 72% of those earning $50,000 to $99,999, against 64% of households under $25,000.