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Good Credit, Bad Credit, Who Cares When it Comes to Dating, Right?

Posted on November 19, 2008

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So would you date someone seriously with bad credit?

Let me just say that I would be the first to admit that I have before and…it was not fun. So I will NOT do it again.

Yes, yes, we’ve all made silly mistakes due to hard times or just because. No one is perfect but, if you don’t care about fixing your mistakes, then you’re not living the life you deserve for yourself and your future.

Dating someone with bad credit is definitely an experience I do not care to repeat. You can tell a lot from a person’s credit report. For real, for real.

Let me tell you what I learned while dating someone with bad credit:

• He couldn’t pay his bills or was severely late paying one because he couldn’t get caught up;
• He received tons of phone calls (even on his cell phone) and mail from collectors and creditors;
• He had a hard time keeping money in the bank and/or his wallet;
• He was forced to close his checking account since the bank was taking too many risks dealing with him;
• He had racked up hundreds of dollars in NSF fees;
• He couldn’t get a debt consolidation loan, a department store credit card, and no other bank would open a banking account for him, all due to his credit history;
• He needed financial education (in a bad way).

Poor guy, right?

Yeah, I felt sorry for him. But learning that he was not interested in fixing his problem (actions speak louder than words) made me realize that I could not have a future with him. Even though, in all other ways, he was totally Mr. McDreamy!

I imagine that, if we were still together, I would have a hard time really taking care of business, because I’d have to take care of his problems, too.

We’d have a hard time getting loans, and if we did get approved, our interest rates would be sky high (I would have a sky high club card), which means I’d be paying more in finance charges than I care to. Lenders and creditors would take advantage of his bad credit and my good credit: “Well Mrs. Blah Blah, your rate is based on the combination of his score and your score so that’s why it’s 17% instead of 6%. Oh and, yes, we’ll need a deposit for your new cell phones too!”

Yeah, I am NOT having that—DUDE! No way.

What I’m saying is that it is not fun to have bad credit. To not fix it is one thing, but if you don’t know how then you need to educate yourself. To not care about it is CrAzY! There are so many ways to educate yourself about credit: you can learn from financial seminars (sometimes these are free), reading magazines and/books about finance, on-line research, or just by asking your credit union or financial institution for help. There are so many free resources out there, why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of them?

So, who else out there dated Mr./Ms. Bad Credit? Tell me all about it!