After more than 30 years of telling Americans to swear off debt, Dave Ramsey no longer has a credit score of his own — and he says that's the point.
"My FICO score is zero," the 66-year-old radio host and founder of Franklin, Tennessee-based Ramsey Solutions said during a 2024 talk defending his 7 Baby Steps program. "And here's how dumb our culture is. I can go to the local apartment complex ... and I can't rent an apartment there."
He also said he could "write a check and buy the complex."
Roughly 25 million U.S. adults had a credit file that couldn't be scored as of 2020, about 9.8% of the adult population, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated in a June 2025 revision of its own long-cited figures. Most of them can't write a check for the complex. So what does life without a score actually look like?
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Why Ramsey calls it an 'I love debt' score
FICO weights payment history at 35% of the score, amounts owed at 30% and length of credit history at 15%, with new credit and credit mix filling out the rest.
That's the heart of Ramsey's complaint — the formula only looks at debt. By his math, even a million-dollar raise wouldn't move the score a single point.
"The FICO score mathematically is an 'I love debt' score," he said in the same talk. At another point, he mocked how seriously Americans take the number: "We worship at the altar of the great FICO. Great FICO, you are the provider of all good things."
Ramsey also leaned on his company's own numbers. Ramsey Solutions surveyed more than 10,000 U.S. millionaires between November 2017 and January 2018 for its National Study of Millionaires, and Ramsey told the audience that 82% of them never had a car loan or lease. None of them, he said, got rich off airline miles.
The study does come from Ramsey's own company, which sells books and courses on debt-free living — so it's hardly a neutral source.
Can you actually rent an apartment with no credit score?
Yes, but expect more paperwork. Ramsey Solutions' guide to living without a credit score, last updated April 15, 2025, tells renters to be ready with a bigger deposit (often first and last month's rent), proof of on-time utility payments and a reference from a previous landlord. If the leasing office asks for a score, the guide's advice is to be upfront that you don't borrow and pay for everything in cash — and to be prepared to shop around, especially if you're renting for the first time.
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