This past month or so I have been busy with a lot of financial investigations.  I am looking at beginning to pay off my student loans, perhaps moving to a new apartment, and eventually having to trade in my old automobile.  As anyone who has applied for loans or leases has discovered, it matters little who you actually are when the decisions are made about offering you an apartment, an auto loan, an interest rate...  What matters most in the eyes of the lending institution (my what a telling word: "institution") is a small three-digit number attached to your Social Security identity, name and employment history.

This number matters increasingly to those institutions, as the housing crisis expands and the loosey goosey granting of massive amounts of equity-growing financial transactions have shaken the foundation of our collective well-being.  No longer are banks and mortgage companies and loan divisions of companies willing to give just anyone money.  This is prudent, of course.  We have allowed ourselves to swim in a dark sea of denial that now we see has rumbling underneath the source of a vast, devastating fiscal tsunami.  As you navigate the financial ocean, however, and try to make informed choices about what is best for you, your future, your family, it is important to realize that the number assigned to you as your credit score is also increasingly arbitrary.

What once was a fairly reliable indicator of ones' financial responsibility has become an unsavory stew.  This nasty concoction consists mainly of the fresh vegetables that are indeed your responsibility: old unpaid debts, repaid debts, existing student loans in repayment, utility bills, any defaults on auto loans, rent or mortgages and bounced checks.  Thats not easy to digest but at least those influences are honestly your burden, and it is fair to have to be judged as a good or poor financial risk because of your choices.  On top of that, they are choices that you know are going to affect your overall "bank-ability".  You are an informed party about these choices and their consequences.  It may go down smooth or hard, but you can digest it.

Added to the stew in increasingly distasteful and rotten chunks are: demerits earned when companies or individuals examine your credit report (if you are applying for loans from more than one source or viewing many apartments, these instances will rack up very quickly!); any attempts by another person trying to apply for credit in your name (pre-identity theft actions: applying for credit cards or purchasing things in your name); actual identity theft actions; traffic tickets (moving violations only, so far, in most states); memberships in fault (not returning those movies on time?); too many accounts open at once (which mean not only credit accounts, but cell phone accounts, internet service accounts, cable accounts, and entertainment accounts - netflix, music dowloading,etc.); and "excessive use" of store courtesy cards (the ones that give you discounts at check-out).

I am sure that there are more items that actually affect your credit score, but these were the most surprizing ones that were given to me through several sources: first hand observation of my own credit report and from VPIRG: the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.

It seems to me that in order to be an informed consumer, one must actually be armed with the knowledge of just how you will be judged and by what criteria.  Any criminal in our country is (supposed to be) informed of their rights and are briefed on what to expect when they face a judge and jury!  Consumers are often left falling without a net when faced by the wealth of information that counts against them when they begin to make a major financial leap.  I certainly never knew that having five video memberships at once would cause my Credit Score to plummet or that by seeing ten apartments in one week my Credit Report would resemble swiss cheese... full of gaping holes left behind by the stares of prospective landlords.  Not that I'm going to buy cable tv now because my memberships are deemed a "liability", or stop looking for a new home...

I AM, however, going to start becoming a lot more vocal about the dysfunction of our financial system as it currently exists.  I know a lot more about who I am, what my values are, how reliable I am as a tenant or customer of a revolving debt; a lot more about the integrity of myself as an individual than any record of supposed facts about my payment history here and there.  I feel the need to fight for the human connection.  I do not want to be judged by this number that was sourced from too broad of a criteria to truly be accurate.  I want to be seen as a holistic being who has values and responsibilities and a proven history of reliable relationship with those whom I have signed contracts.  And in those instances where I have chosen to refrain from entering a contract, the lack of credit history should not deem me unworthy, either.  Not having a back account is sometimes sound financial planning.  The whole of my choices cannot be seen on these two pages of data.  The whole of my humanity and how it interacts with the material world is not recognizable by these numbers.

I want to be seen as a person whose integrity comes from a place much more meaningful than this combination of digits.  Once upon a time, a resume mattered, references mattered.  If ones' own testimony and that of sound professional colleagues wasn't enough proof, perhaps a bank statement was required or pay stubs, to help prove someone's economic character.  My grandfather bought a house once with a $50 down payment and a letter of recommendation from the Northern Vermont Railroad, for whom he had thus far worked for twenty years.  But those days of such an intimate and intelligent character assessment seem as far in the past as the telegraph.

When someone mentions to me that my credit score is low, I have begun saying that my personal integrity is high.  This may not be so easilly a quantifiable and documentable thing: integrity.  But this is the standard by which I calculate the worthiness of people and the standard to which I hold myself.  My choices to have accounts or not; to choose the products, foods and services I consume consciously;  my ability to save money and live frugally and sustainably; the choice to do without material possessions so that my time is spent more on cultivating creativity than upon earning money to pay for those possessions... These are the criteria with which I judge myself to have integrity.  So I say "no" to being a number!  I declare myself more than a consumer or a commodity!  May we all stand up, as a society, and declare ourselves more than our credit score!

** illustration coming ** to be posted soon**

Li Li Parsons 2008