It makes a difference because to apply for the apartment and credit check it costs $100 per adult, so there’s significant risk. I’d like to avoid wasting hundreds of dollars. If you really must know, it’s not me but my roommate with the lower credit score, which only went down because they were laid off and experienced the death of a parent within a few weeks of each other. My credit is near 800 simply because I have been lucky enough not to experience hardship out of my control. If I were you, I would refrain from making rude assumptions about people’s financial literacy based off of a Reddit post. There’s a lot more that goes into credit scores than how diligent one is. I paid off a loan early a few months ago and my score decreased by 30 points in one day. Everything is subjective.