For many consumers, a perfect credit score is like a four-leaf clover. You know it exists. It’s just rare.

The FICO credit score model ranges from a low of 300 to a high of 850. Just 1.5 percent of scorable U.S. consumers earn an 850 as of this past April, according to Ethan Dornhelm, vice president of Scores and Predictive Analytics at FICO.

Each credit bureau report generates a score depending on the model used. The most widely used is FICO. So you can have more than one credit score depending on the credit file searched and the version of the scoring model used. I keep a constant watch on my scores, taking advantage of the many ways to view them for free. By the way, the scores given to consumers can differ from the ones used by lenders.

Read more at The Washington Post.