The leading indicator to me was when I started spending more time trying to recover from identity thefts every year than not. The frauds became novel, no longer just maxing out retail credit lines to baby goods and lingerie shops, but exploiting internal corporate processes that were tedious to discover, explain, and clear. I'm not really served by credit, so it felt like I was going through a lot of effort talking with companies, writing affidavits, and getting police reports for nothing.

So I stopped fixing it.

And guess what? Not having perfect credit made me such an unattractive target that it hasn't happened since. I write letters of dispute to the bureaus, but if they choose not to remove anything (the debt collectors are much easier to convince, by comparison), I suppose that's as far as I'll go until I need it.