If you're fixated on your 750-plus credit score simply because of its proximity to the perfect score of 850, you're missing the larger point.
It's not awareness of the numbers themselves that matter, Credit Karma CEO and founder Ken Lin tells Business Insider. It's the promise those numbers can hold.
"Just having access to your credit score or your report doesn't really make your life better," Lin explains, "but being able to go to school because you can get a student loan or being able to buy a house, that's really the goal. We're trying to build a technology and a site that will help consumers do more of that."
Lin makes the good point that credit scores, which were created to compile your history into a single unit of measurement for potential lenders, aren't just important because of what they say about your past or the grade they give your credit behavior. They really matter when it comes to planning out your future.
A high credit score won't earn you gold stars in personal finance class, but it can smooth your way to achieving major financial goals.
Credit Karma, which provides free credit score tracking, was recently valued at more than $1 billion after raising $75 million in a Series D funding round.