Credit reports run on aging rules, and a single quiet year almost certainly still leaves you with a score. On how far back the report goes: - Revolving and installment accounts (credit cards and loans) generally drop off about seven years after the date of last activity. - Bankruptcies, judgments, and other public records fall off after roughly ten years. So the report rolls forward and old items age off rather than following you forever. On the inactivity question: after one year without using credit, your existing accounts are still on file, so you almost certainly still generate a score. Generating one gets harder after about two to three years of no activity, because the model wants to see recent behavior. The simple defense is to keep a little activity going. Put a small charge on a card and pay it off, with utilization sitting in the low single digits (roughly 1 to 10%), just to show ongoing, responsible use. And if a score has gone dormant, using a card again usually restores it fairly quickly, so you are not starting over from zero. If you are preparing to buy and are not sure whether your file is active enough, a soft-pull review will show exactly where your score stands.