Talk about stuff that makes no sense

This morning we received an e-mail from our bank with the subject line:

Your FICO Score changed, Barry

When I clicked on the link and logged in to our account, I found that our credit score had dropped over the past six months from over 800 (“Exceptional”) to a bit under 800 (“Very Good”). This was followed by an explanation:

Key Factor(s) Affecting Your FICO^® Score:

Lack of recent installment loan information

FICO^® Scores consider recent non-mortgage installment loans (such as auto or student loans) information on a person’s credit report. Your score was impacted because your credit report shows no recent non-mortgage installment loans or insufficient recent information about your loans.

Too few accounts currently paid as agreed

FICO^® Scores consider the number of accounts that are paid as agreed. Your score was impacted because the number of these accounts is too low, or because you've missed payments recently on some of your accounts.

In other words, we are being penalized – penalized! – for paying everything on time and being good and responsible citizens!

I wanted to learn more, so I scrolled down a bit, I found the following in the description of credit scores:

Score Deciding Factors

I was only able to find our monthly credit scores for the past six months, during which time the score has decreased by a bit each month. I recognize that the message we received was almost assuredly the result of an automated system. But would it be so difficult to write code to take into account that there are actually people out there who are blessed to have paid off their mortgages and do not need to stretch out their credit card payments? Believe me, for many years Barry and I were literally barely making it through each month. Now that we are reasonably comfortable, I would like to think they would come and congratulate us for all those years of hard work at our educations and careers and our ability to take care of ourselves.

This reminded me of an old recurrent Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Steve Martin, Theodoric of York. I was able to find a video of “Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber.”

But the skit that comes to mind here is “Theodoric of York, Medieval Judge.” After ridiculous sentences for accused criminals, Mr. Martin turns to the camera and wonders aloud whether, in the future, men will be judged by a jury of their peers, but after speaking gloriously of this system, like the end of the barber skit, says “Nah!”

That congratulatory call from the folks who bring us our credit scores is just about as likely!

Love,

Rebecca