In the US a frequently aired TV commercial features a forlorn young husband forced to live with his in-laws because he was clueless about his bride's abysmal credit history. The ad's purpose is to spur (scare?) young lovers into sharing financial histories and credit scores.
Journalist Marilyn Kennedy Melia, writing at the Bankrate website, believes that, if it's true love, credit-scarred individuals have little to fear about revealing their financial status.
Sponsor of the scarey commerical, web site freecreditreport.com, is obviously hoping to boost sales of its credit information reports. Romantic partners are a big, untapped market. The article quotes a spokeswoman as saying:
We have found that people often aren't interested in reviewing their credit report until there is a life event which makes them aware of how important it is.
The article also quotes Peter Larson, clinical psychologist and vice president of LifeInnovations, the organisation that created the PREPARE/ENRICH marital readiness inventory:
If I had any reason to believe my partner had a checkered financial past, I may want to sit down with a financial adviser and look at credit scores before I made the decision to combine finances. For some couples, this is an important move to being able to buy a house or finance a car. They need the credit of the individual most worthy of that type of financing."
But, if it's true love, credit-scarred individuals may have nothing to fear about exchanging their credit histories. The Internet dating service, True.com, conducted a survey earlier this year of some 2,200 online respondents. In response to a question about whether they would stay in a relationship where their partner had substantial credit card debt or had filed for bankruptcy, 87 percent of men and 80 percent of women said they would.
You can read the article in full here.
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