{"id":93,"date":"2008-07-03T21:10:28","date_gmt":"2008-07-04T04:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/?p=93"},"modified":"2022-04-14T11:21:16","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T17:21:16","slug":"why-fico-scores-are-dumb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/2008\/07\/03\/why-fico-scores-are-dumb\/","title":{"rendered":"Why FICO scores are dumb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I pulled my FICO score after not having checked it for five years. For those that don&#8217;t know, banks use your FICO score to decide how credit worthy you are. Seeing my <a href=\"https:\/\/joywallet.com\/article\/credit-sesame-review\/\">Credit Sesame free credit score<\/a> gave me a great sense for just how broken our banking industry is!<\/p>\n<p>Five years ago, my wife and I bid a fond adieu to our alma mater with barely a penny to our name. The last five years have been very good to us: my salary has increased, we&#8217;re saving for retirement, and our house is half paid for. You wouldn&#8217;t know that from my FICO score, though: Today it is 50 points <b>lower<\/b> than it was five years ago. That&#8217;s right, the average bank would rather lend money to me as a starving student. Thanks to the FICO algorithm, which apparently has Kool-Aid for brains, I&#8217;m a credit risk.<\/p>\n<p>Of course I was curious. <b>Why was it lower?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>A little detective work revealed that my score sunk mostly because of a $150 clerical error. Amazing! One hundred fifty measly bucks, and even though I&#8217;ve never missed a house or credit card payment, and even though I make <b>much<\/b> more money than I used to, I&#8217;m <b>less<\/b> credit worthy.<\/p>\n<p>After I pay off this house, I hope to never borrow money again. Fair Issac and Company: you can keep your credit score. With any luck I won&#8217;t be needing it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I pulled my FICO score after not having checked it for five years. For those that don&#8217;t know, banks use your FICO score to decide how credit worthy you are. Seeing my Credit Sesame free credit score gave me a great sense for just how broken our banking industry is! Five years ago, my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1657,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/1657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesmithfam.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}