Straight Scoop on Dating a Credit Score

You've seen reports from many media outlets on the most recent dating craze…using FICO (credit) scores as a criteria for a possible compatible match. From NBC News, ABC News and the Economist to Oprah Winfrey and Suze Orman you’ve heard the virtues of making sure you have a partner with a good FICO (credit) score. (Suze Orman among many other affiliates has a “deal” with Fair Isaac that promotes their version of a credit score called the FICO score.) It’s assumed people with high credit scores are much better financial matches. While a good credit score may be a plus to your potential love interest, the subjectivity of it makes a public credit score a possible vehicle for deception. So my advice is to beware. Credit scores are and should be as private as your social security number, driver’s license numbers, banking information and any personal information.

Upon hearing of a dating website based on everyone’s FICO score I started to wonder just how authentic the scores would be assuming that the site was set and sorted on a FICO score filter. Would a site like this ask to view your credit reports and scores to authenticate the scores or would they just rely on honesty when potential searchers sign up on their website? The site that has gotten all the hype is Creditscoredating.com and I thought I had better check it out from a consumer standpoint. Remember you can’t always believe everything you read or hear and being a proponent of that idea I thought it important to experience first hand whether or not this hyped site was true to its claims. More importantly is it authentic?

Signing onto the site you are first required to become a free member where you are prompted to enter a profile and all your preferences. Since this site’s name and claim to fame is the credit score of each candidate who signs up, I looked diligently for a place where they would either ask you for specific personal information to pull credit reports and scores for authenticity or a place you might enter your own credit scores. There was neither. I looked everywhere on the site including the profile, Preferences, FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and Contact Us pages. I found nothing! I couldn’t believe that missing this in the FAQ’s was good business. So I decided to e-mail the contact and ask where this information was and how I might search on this information. I got a prompt reply back.

“ We encourage completion of profile information which includes a member adding their average credit score. This information would be shown when another member views their profile. Unfortunately some do add this information immediately and others will do it later or not at all. Thank you for bringing the subject to our attention. We have noticed that a field was turned off (about me) where we ask a person signing up to input their credit score.”

Well ok mistakes happen. However, now we know they do not pull anyone’s credit report for a score which means we now know that anyone can input any credit score they want based on their own honesty without any authentication. I’m more than sure people who have a 480 credit score are going to put that out into the dating universe! Probably not. And now that we heard from the site, can we assume those who don’t put their score out there are hiding something or maybe just believe that it’s none of anyone’s business in the beginning stages of the dating game? What intelligent consumer is actually going to put his/her score in their profile, especially a score that is considered questionable? How do we know that if this is such an important criteria for finding a match/mate we are getting truthful information? Sounds like just another area that can be left to the whim of the person who maintains his/her own profile. Let alone the validity of the argument that a lower score makes for a bad match choice, how many low scores are you going to actually see on this sort of a website? It would be relationship suicide to do so.

My two cents? This is just another way to make money by making prospective customers believe that matching by credit score is important in this economy. While credit scores and how one handles money IS very important to the survival of a relationship, let’s not put the cart before the horse here. There are so many reasons a credit score may be less than perfect and some is through no fault of their own. Take it from me, I’ve seen good people with low scores who have done most things right, some who have made little use of credit and are cash rich who have low scores because credit history was not on their side as far as calculating a score. I’ve met people who prefer to pay cash and make little or no use of credit cards (revolving credit) which again can lower your score since it is assumed revolving credit and its use is a good measure of a credit score. Membership and the need to pull one’s own FICO score may be profit enough for this site above but the real question…are you getting what you pay for? If you need to find a date online stick to the basics and approach the credit score issue when you both think there may be some compatibility.