April 15, 2007
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NEWS: All's Fair in Love and FICO
It must be a product of the ages-old conflict between men and women, a battle as ancient as the war over the remote control, or a skirmish over household finances. What happens when one partner in a marriage or serious relationship has a better credit score than the other? Does one have the right to lord it over their significant other, to drag up credit tidbits bad and/or good (she had to max out her Visa buying a new wardrobe / his new sports car pushed their income-to-debt ratio just over the limit)? Is one expected to be a gracious victor, sweetly offering to bear the brunt of the financing when it comes time to take out a new loan on a car/home/boat et cetera?
It sounds patently trivial, but the itty-bitty news brief that comparing FICO scores has led to war in many households has made national wires, and is gleefully being circulated around the internet. It seems, in particular, that several husbands have gotten their respective noses out of joint in the process of discovering that their wives have cushier credit than do they. Maybe it's the good old provider instinct, or something much more caveman-insidious, but all reports indicate that it is a galling divide indeed, one at the center of many conflicts.
Our advice is not to let something as relatively silly as a FICO score fly in the face of true love, especially when you can manipulate the inequity to mutual benefit. When taking out a car loan, for example, having the credit-dominate mate come first on the application, with the other tacked on as a co-signer, ensures that the credit-challenged partner will get a piggyback boost with each month's on-time payment. Or just be glad that one partner has good credit, and don't stress over the matter!