Would you marry/not marry someone based on their credit report?

[Amelia G]

I've been watching kind of a lot of television while sick. There is this one ad running on History Channel about how this guy married the girl of his dreams, but her credit was bad because of an old credit card debt, so now they live in her parents basement and, if he could have run her credit, he would still be a bachelor with a dog and a yard.

If she is the girl of his dreams, that seems like a pretty surmountable and lame reason to not tie the knot, to me. But maybe that sort of thing is really a factor to other people.

Would it make you not marry someone who was the girl or guy of your dreams if they had bad credit? Would it make you marry someone who was not the girl or guy of your dreams if they had good credit?

[sunkarma]

This world is too damn material.
As long as you have a place to live, food to eat, and a job- credit doesn't really matter. Especially if you are happy together and they are the "____ of your dreams". It would seem very superficial to judge your paramore based on a stupid credit score. It IS a lame reason.

[OliX]

I guess 99% of people here would say that credit doesn't matter. But then 90% of population would say that it matters.
Unfortunately we live in material world where money is freedom so I'm realy torn apart with this question. I know I won't marry anyone, at least not yet and I really don't get this marriage idea, I find it egoistic. Having one and only partner for rest of your life. Who want's to f..k one person over and over (joke)

Do you need to marrie one to be happy? Is it really needed? Can't you just trust each other? Is that bonding really needed to make you feel safe and secure in that your partner will stay with you?

[Mindgames]

It's not the point if you should 'run a check' or not. You shouldn't be marrying someone if you don't know that much about them in the first place, and part of the whole plan for marriage/cohabiting/surgical attachment of genitals is that if you're sitting there the day before thinking "...I won't tell him I shot a cop in Guatemala and my real name isn't Cheryl, it's Gary..." this is the point you should NOT GET MARRIED.

Supposedly-sane men and women marry someone they met two days earlier in a bar, then go home and watch people beat the crap out of each other on Springer because someone hid a terrible secret. Shouldn't there be some mental penny dropping?

[malcolm]

if i could get married i would rather be broke and homless than be stuck wih someone who i didnt love.

[Mr Karl]

managing personal finances is a pretty simple skill to master, but sort of importantant in the getting married game......well, unless your bonnie and clyde or mickey and mallory

[Exquisite]

Finances isn't everything but money is a fantastic reason to have a fight. When my husband and I got married we basically cleared the decks, paying off everything we could. My student loan, his credit cards etc.

I don't think it would occur to me to run a credit report on him, although with my airhead method of paying bills I wouldn't blame him if he did. However too many credit checks messes up your credit ... no really it makes you look like you are shopping for credit.

[Cafe_Post_Mortem]

I don't think bad credit is a reason not to be with someone, but it may be a reason to delay marriage.

Marriage is, at it's heart, a financial contract. Love, companionship, emotion, none of that is inherent to marriage. None of that can be contracted. Money can. Lashing yourself to a sinking ship financially, just because all of the trappings of marriage tell you money shouldn't matter, is a little sill when money (or property really) is the core of the marriage contract.

If you meet the girl or boy of your dreams, and there credit would sink you, do not get married based on romantic notions of what marriage should be. Put it off while you work to repair his or her credit. Have a ceremony with your friends, wear rings, get tattoos or whatever, but do not enter into marriage without knowing what it does and what it really is. Don't let the emotional blather get you into a bad contract. Love exists well on it's own without marriage, and you can wait a few years to keep the marriage from tanking down the road because of something like money.

But I am a cynic, not a lover or a lawyer.

[Lady Alias]

I can see very bad credit as a reason not to marry. It means they are not responsible, and I wouldn't want to marry someone like that.
However, good credit is not a reason to marry.

[Michelle Aston]

If you based marriage on good credit that would restrict the pool even more by even more millions. It is hard to find someone that you are compatible with and must bad credit falls off after 7 years. If marriage is forever, 7 yrs. is a drop in the bucket. I would rather marry someone that made me laugh and was witty than someone with a perfect credit line.

[Donald Rilea]

If you based marriage on good credit that would restrict the pool even more by even more millions. It is hard to find someone that you are compatible with and must bad credit falls off after 7 years. If marriage is forever, 7 yrs. is a drop in the bucket. I would rather marry someone that made me laugh and was witty than someone with a perfect credit line.

A woman after my own heart!!!! Brava, Ms. Aston!!!

[VoldtaEngler]

That commercial is retarded (its for freecreditreport). Can't stand the other one either where they sing about being identidy phished and now he has to work at a seafood restraunt. Not sure why if your credit would be phished that it would automatically downgrade your job status, but whatever!

Anywho, M.Aston said it best. Love > a credit number

[eviltwin]

My brother went with a girl that tried to get him to marry her because "they would have less tax liability". He left her very soon after that. Go figure.
I never got the marriage thing anyway, it is not, and never will be for me..
Then again, i don't get credit reports either.
If you know someone, and are at all intuitive, you should know more about them than a credit report can show, but that is just me. To each their own.

[mmmcherry]

i would rather be broke and homless than be stuck wih someone who i didnt love.

malcolm you rock. i couldmt have said it better myself.
and come up to canada to get married ill buy you a moose for a wedding present... theyre very tasty you know.

[Amelia G]

It's not the point if you should 'run a check' or not. You shouldn't be marrying someone if you don't know that much about them in the first place, and part of the whole plan for marriage/cohabiting/surgical attachment of genitals is that if you're sitting there the day before thinking "...I won't tell him I shot a cop in Guatemala and my real name isn't Cheryl, it's Gary..." this is the point you should NOT GET MARRIED.

Supposedly-sane men and women marry someone they met two days earlier in a bar, then go home and watch people beat the crap out of each other on Springer because someone hid a terrible secret. Shouldn't there be some mental penny dropping?

It seems to me like that sort of info should come up in conversation at some point during courtship, although I think it would be incredibly lame to not marry someone based on credit type info. Then again, I know more than my fair share of people who tied the knot on a bender in Vegas and that is non-ideal as well.

[malcolm]

malcolm you rock. i couldmt have said it better myself.
and come up to canada to get married ill buy you a moose for a wedding present... theyre very tasty you know.

i heard they do free sex changes up there.........is that true? and no, i dont have anyon special in my life to get married to. just kinda looking for mister right now instead of mister right at the moment. lol

[mmmcherry]

heh thats always good... about the free sex changes... i wouldnt have the first clue and honestly dont want to know hahaa!!

[malcolm]

sall good.i would need to go through alot of shit before i even went there if i decided to go that route.wil just settle for drag for now lol

[mmmcherry]

sexy

[malcolm]

i can be.

[DoomTart]

I am going to be a bit of a wet blanket here, because I do think that some of these credit issues can be a big, fat red flag. Let me preface this with I do, very much, believe in love, but as for it conquering all, don't think so.

First of all, what type of credit problems are they? If it's the pretty standard 'going on spending spree with credit cards', or 'in debt but managing then losing job then not managing at all', these are really not that serious and very understandable. If it is a consistant problem...big, fat red flag.

Like my first husband: When we met he had no credit at all, but money in the bank; I had excellent credit. After we got married he was added to my 2 credit cards and he went on a major spending spree; maxxing them all out, then using them to open more accounts; he also emptied both our bank accounts so I had no money to pay the debts. I later learned that the reason he had money in the bank was because his mother took all his checks then doled out an allowance to him every week. We filed for bankruptcy within a year. I got 1 credit card back and didn't put him on the account. He called the bank and had another card issued in his name, where upon he proceeded to do the same thing again, and this time it was 2x worse and the debt could not be discharged through bankruptcy. And who was responsible? Me. It didn't matter that I did not sign for any of those charges, we were a married couple and, according to law, we are both responsible for debts incurred within the marriage. I got quite a lesson in 'marital finances' as I tried to fight the debts. I spent 3 years after our divorce paying off his debts, and my credit is in the dumpster.

My current husband and I have had financial problems off and on over the years, but they have been due to unemployment and problems with business partners, and we have weathered it all fine.

It's not the credit rating per se, but how the potential spouse handles money that you have to look out for.

[Donald Rilea]

I am going to be a bit of a wet blanket here, because I do think that some of these credit issues can be a big, fat red flag. Let me preface this with I do, very much, believe in love, but as for it conquering all, don't think so.

First of all, what type of credit problems are they? If it's the pretty standard 'going on spending spree with credit cards', or 'in debt but managing then losing job then not managing at all', these are really not that serious and very understandable. If it is a consistant problem...big, fat red flag.

Like my first husband: When we met he had no credit at all, but money in the bank; I had excellent credit. After we got married he was added to my 2 credit cards and he went on a major spending spree; maxxing them all out, then using them to open more accounts; he also emptied both our bank accounts so I had no money to pay the debts. I later learned that the reason he had money in the bank was because his mother took all his checks then doled out an allowance to him every week. We filed for bankruptcy within a year. I got 1 credit card back and didn't put him on the account. He called the bank and had another card issued in his name, where upon he proceeded to do the same thing again, and this time it was 2x worse and the debt could not be discharged through bankruptcy. And who was responsible? Me. It didn't matter that I did not sign for any of those charges, we were a married couple and, according to law, we are both responsible for debts incurred within the marriage. I got quite a lesson in 'marital finances' as I tried to fight the debts. I spent 3 years after our divorce paying off his debts, and my credit is in the dumpster.

My current husband and I have had financial problems off and on over the years, but they have been due to unemployment and problems with business partners, and we have weathered it all fine.

It's not the credit rating per se, but how the potential spouse handles money that you have to look out for.

I wouldn't say you're being a wet blanket here, DoomTart.

If anything, what you are saying what good financial and marital sense, as money issues can sink a relationship very quickly if both people in it aren't careful.

[malcolm]

that sux. and true. i can't hold onto money to put it away myself.

[inox]

I've been watching kind of a lot of television while sick. There is this one ad running on History Channel about how this guy married the girl of his dreams, but her credit was bad because of an old credit card debt, so now they live in her parents basement and, if he could have run her credit, he would still be a bachelor with a dog and a yard.

If she is the girl of his dreams, that seems like a pretty surmountable and lame reason to not tie the knot, to me. But maybe that sort of thing is really a factor to other people.

Would it make you not marry someone who was the girl or guy of your dreams if they had bad credit? Would it make you marry someone who was not the girl or guy of your dreams if they had good credit?

Funny that you mention it, b/c that commercial offended me when I saw it.

I have very good credit, but if someone is the partner "of your dreams", how shallow would you have to be to avoid them because of financial reasons? Also, as they say in the song, it's because of a bad financial choice in her past. They don't even imply that she's somehow financially reckless in the present.

Personally, I think by "girl of his dreams" he means "girl that's physically out of his league."

[Amelia G]

Funny that you mention it, b/c that commercial offended me when I saw it.

I have very good credit, but if someone is the partner "of your dreams", how shallow would you have to be to avoid them because of financial reasons? Also, as they say in the song, it's because of a bad financial choice in her past. They don't even imply that she's somehow financially reckless in the present.

Personally, I think by "girl of his dreams" he means "girl that's physically out of his league."

I'm glad I wasn't the only one offended by it and thanks for the translation. I almost feel a little better if I imagine that the character in the commercial was only dreaming the physical. Of course girl-one-would-masturbate-to-in-a-music-video versus girl of one's dreams . . . well, there is a difference. The other thing which really annoyed me about the whole premise of that commercial is that generally, if two or more people are applying for credit together, only one of the people having bad credit can really be overcome. Like, at Old Cambodia, I had good credit and that helped overcome some of the people I was living with having bad credit or no credit. And the characters were not even living at his parents' place; they are in her parents' basement. I realize they are fictional and all, but that commercial is trying to spread some values which strike me as kinda dickhead and foolish.

[Amerist]

I greatly prefer the other commercial -- as it involves pirates in some cursory way.

The marriage version definitely struck a soul chord with me, especially because something tells me that one cannot use their service to "investigate" another person. Certainly a free credit report could be pulled on oneself, but how exactly (without skirting the boundaries of being a moral person) could one get the credit report of someone else without asking them outright? (Hiring a private detective?)

If my potential dream critter's credit report is going to damage me that much...perhaps if s/he knows it, we could work to repair it before getting on board together. A laudable use.

Except that the commercial somehow suggests that he should have checked her credit first ... how?

[Amelia G]

I greatly prefer the other commercial -- as it involves pirates in some cursory way.

The marriage version definitely struck a soul chord with me, especially because something tells me that one cannot use their service to "investigate" another person. Certainly a free credit report could be pulled on oneself, but how exactly (without skirting the boundaries of being a moral person) could one get the credit report of someone else without asking them outright? (Hiring a private detective?)

If my potential dream critter's credit report is going to damage me that much...perhaps if s/he knows it, we could work to repair it before getting on board together. A laudable use.

Except that the commercial somehow suggests that he should have checked her credit first ... how?

As I understand it, the way a "service" like that makes its money is by selling data. When you use them to request a credit report, they ask for a bunch of info, which they then sell to the credit reporting agencies. It is pretty easy to find out someone else's social security number, especially in states where it is on the Drivers License. It is egregiously illegal to pull credit on other people without permission, but unlikely to be prosecuted.

Of course, real people in a serious relationship are likely to discuss where their finances are at. But I suspect that commercial could get a lot of people who were not at that stage of a relationship to pull credit reports on their significant others.

[karyn]

As I understand it, the way a "service" like that makes its money is by selling data. When you use them to request a credit report, they ask for a bunch of info, which they then sell to the credit reporting agencies. It is pretty easy to find out someone else's social security number, especially in states where it is on the Drivers License. It is egregiously illegal to pull credit on other people without permission, but unlikely to be prosecuted.

Of course, real people in a serious relationship are likely to discuss where their finances are at. But I suspect that commercial could get a lot of people who were not at that stage of a relationship to pull credit reports on their significant others.

i did some fact-checking on this and it appears to be true that this kind of company makes their money this way