Credit reports are strange beasties. They are individualized reports of financial worthiness run by private companies who don’t know you from Adam (or Eve or Steve), yet these faceless monoliths of corporate culture can keep you from getting a job, a car, or a house. Well, unless you want to get around that by paying 25-30% interest. Trust me...I’ve been there and it sucketh mightily. Thanks in part to a horrid upbringing on the cost of real items in the “real” world and to the non-existence of laws keeping vultures (aka college credit card representatives) away from college campuses, I got a front row seat to a morality play about the horrors of fucking up one’s credit and the long path of redemption necessary to restore it.
It starts with a long fall from the grace of seeming financial equanimity, a journey through the wastelands of high interest rates with your BFFs, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax, the climax of your 25-year-old self attacking you late at night with a large hatchet and threatening to beat you silly if you don’t get your head out of your arse so that your 30-year-old self might have a shot at home ownership and respectability someday, and then the less-than-climactic denouement of paying off all your bills at once (thanks to your loan-happy fairy aunt). The play closes with a shot of you checking in with your BFFs every 3-6 months to make sure that they are reporting accurate info, because, like a lot of friends, they are prone to holding grudges and making up exaggerated stories about you.
Some of the various lies that my BFFs have said about me include reporting that I was dead (thanks, TransUnion! I love you too!), reporting that I had a spouse named John (not bloody likely), reporting accounts that were closed as open and accounts that were paid as unpaid. My BFFs’ really suck at accounting. Luckily, though, they are prone to the art of persuasion...if you argue with them enough, and for long enough, eventually they’ll pretty much back the hell down and start telling the truth and nothing but the truth. Well...sometimes they get a little ahead of themselves, like this year...my BFF Experian (whom I now only check in with once a year, as we’ve grown apart somewhat), was reporting that my spouse’s name was “Scooter.” (Okay, well, it reported her real name, but you get the idea.) Dude - either wait until I actually pop the question or move to Massachusetts, mmmkay? One joint Storehouse credit card does not a marriage make!
(By the way, everyone can pull free credit reports for themselves yearly at www.annualcreditreport.com . Just do it.)
3 comments:
Did it when my wallet was stolen last November. It was a thrill never to be forgotten but oft (say, once a year) to be repeated. Speaking of questionable info, I took you off my insurance policy. Hope you don't mind-- I know you really did value being listed as a potential rider on my new motor scooter. ;-)
I could not possibly be seen on a motor scooter unless I was riding without insurance. That would be beneath my butchness.
Insurance or no, the scooter would indeed, by its very nature as conveyance, be beneath your butchness... or rather your femmeness!?!
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