Average Credit Score Holds at 714, But FICO's Own Report Shows the Bottom Is Getting Crushed

The national average FICO credit score sits at 714 right now. That's down one point from a year ago and flat since October 2025, according to FICO's Fall '26 Score Credit Insights report, released this week.

Behind that flat number is a country splitting in two. Ethan Dornhelm, FICO's head of scores analytics, put it plainly: "Affordability is the defining story in our latest edition of the FICO Score Credit Insights report. Costs have risen across nearly every credit product consumers use, and yet delinquency has improved or held steady across every major loan type."

People aren't missing payments more often. They're just paying a lot more to stay current.

The numbers that matter

The average monthly payment for a first-time homebuyer hit $2,563, according to FICO. That's a 57% jump since 2019, and it has outpaced inflation since interest rates started climbing in 2022.

Mortgage balances for borrowers with scores below 620 are up 43% since April 2019. Auto loan balances for the lowest-scoring borrowers are up 36%. FICO says both increases have outpaced the roughly 30% inflation rate over the same stretch, while higher-scoring borrowers tracked closer to inflation.

Delinquency rates for 90-plus days on both mortgages and auto loans rose exclusively in the lowest score bands. Every higher score range stayed flat. This isn't a broad credit crisis, but a bottom-of-the-ladder crisis.

Tommy Lee, senior director at FICO, told Yahoo Finance the steady national average isn't a sign things got easier. "The stability we're seeing in the national average FICO score isn't necessarily because things have gotten easier for consumers," Lee said. "That's a story about financial discipline under pressure, not economic ease."

TransUnion's Q2 2026 Credit Industry Insights Report backs up the "discipline under pressure" read. TransUnion found just under 262 million Americans now carry a credit balance, and non-mortgage minimum payments grew only 1% to 3% year over year across most risk tiers, generally below inflation. Balance-level credit card delinquency actually ticked down 2 basis points to 1.98%. Michele Raneri, TransUnion's VP and head of U.S. research, said consumers "appear to be managing credit obligations with relative discipline."

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's latest household debt report adds another data point: credit card balances rose $21 billion last quarter to $1.26 trillion, a 1.7% jump that's closing in on last year's record high of $1.28 trillion. People are leaning harder on cards.

Young borrowers are quietly winning

Young Americans are doing better on credit than they were before COVID, not worse. FICO scores for Americans aged 18 to 29 are up 17 points since 2019, the biggest gain of any age group FICO tracks. Millennials are up 10 points.

Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree, told CNN that younger borrowers have gotten smarter about credit out of necessity. "Gen Z is pretty savvy about credit. And they are more aware of credit scores, in part because there have been so many economic headwinds during their lives," Schulz said.

Kelly Klein, a 31-year-old loan officer in Nashville who paid off $100,000 in student loans over a decade, told CNN she credits social media financial education for helping her generation avoid the mistakes older borrowers made. But FICO's own data shows part of the story is simpler: younger borrowers are earlier in their credit histories, giving them more room to climb. A chunk of the youngest cohort's gains trace back to the pandemic-era student loan payment pause, not some permanent generational shift in discipline.

That pause is now unwinding. FICO's report flags 3.2 million consumers with a student loan payment due who've had a recent delinquency, and those borrowers saw an average 38-point year-over-year score drop.

The FICO fee fight in Washington

While FICO touts stability in its own scoring data, the company is facing political heat over what it charges to produce that score in the first place.

Sen. Josh Hawley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, launched an investigation into FICO's planned price increases, arguing in a letter to the company that "these price increases are most damaging to the Americans who can least afford them. First-time homebuyers bear a disproportionate burden of the cost."

A poll from Fabrizio Ward, a top Trump polling firm, found 74% of registered voters back rolling back the fee hikes, with 56% strongly in support, according to Breitbart. Seventy-one percent backed a Justice Department antitrust probe into the matter. The poll also found voters would favor Republican congressional candidates who push to lower FICO fees by a 43-to-18 margin, with affordability ranking as the top issue for swing voters and prospective first-time buyers.

The investigation is ongoing, not concluded. The unresolved question is whether Congress or the Justice Department actually moves on FICO's pricing before the midterms, or whether this stays a polling talking point.

Sources: FICO Score Credit Insights report (Fall 2026), Federal Reserve Bank of New York household debt and credit report, TransUnion Q2 2026 Credit Industry Insights Report, Yahoo Finance, CNN Business, Breitbart, Stock Titan/Business Wire.