Don’t be fooled by her populism

So, the fake “Native American” Senator from Massachusetts (she is, sadly a real Senator), Elizabeth Warren, introduced a bill that would make it illegal for employers to examine the credit reports of prospective employees.

While this practice does suck, because some people get divorced or have a family medical emergency or get their identity stolen, and that hurts their ability to pay their bills on time, for the most part, it can be a useful tool into the background of the type of person an employer is about to hire.

Because no one lies on their resume, ever. And no one ever gets their friends to lie for them as references, ever.

However, if Ms. Warren actually cared about people’s credit rating being torn to shit by circumstances beyond their control, she would champion a law that actually regulated the credit rating agencies and made their policies and procedures reasonable and open to public examination.

I’ll never forget when, back in 2008, The Wife and I were buying our home. For the months prior to getting pre-approved we started making sure every blemish was removed from our reports to get our number up as high as it could be. We were working with a specialist for this and in the beginning we would meet with her and say something along the lines of “and I’m going to contact them and get them to fix such and such misinformation on that one.” She would respond with “oh, don’t do that. that will hurt your score. Do this and that instead.”

What a normal person would think was logical is actually deferential to your “score”. Closing a line of credit that you rarely use is more deferential to your score than maxing it out.

And one of the credit bureaus will raise your score for doing something a different bureau will lower your score if you did it. But if you do nothing, they’ll both do nothing. For a month. Then they’ll both hit you with a decrease in your score.

Shit’s cray, bro.

Personally, I’ll have Bull payed off in March and I’m going to do everything I can to never have another car payment again. Which will hurt my credit rating, I’m sure.