They either think you're a drug dealer or they think to themselves, "this guy is so bad at managing his money that he has to pay one year's rent in advance?" Bad credit isn't permanent. Is a character flaw permanent? Credit is the easiest thing in the world. At 20 years old, I had no credit. I couldn't even get a gas card. I opened a secured card with BOA and put $1k on it. I never ran the balance above $300 and paid it off every month. After a year, the card was upgraded to a regular unsecured type and my limit was quadrupled. Today, at 25, my FICO is in the low 800s. I currently have three credit cards, a VISA, a MC, and a store card. Never needed anymore than that.
People with bad credit scores will (on average) have a history of making poor choices compared to people with good scores. Look at this board, for instance. There are plenty of users that see absolutely nothing wrong with stiffing banks and credit card companies. Some even consider it noble to not pay ones bills. Would you want to employ somebody like that? I sure wouldn't. Would you rather insure their car or the car of somebody who is very responsible? Take a million people with 20 years of credit history. Break out the top 10,000 and bottom 10,000 by credit score. The top 10k will be (on average) better and safer drivers, be better educated, have better jobs, be in better health, be more honest, etc. Does it mean that every single person in top group is a better driver and all the rest compared to every single person in the bottom group? Of course not. But if I am a car insurance company and I need to set rates for a million customers then one easy variable is credit score. There are many other considerations of course, with some being of more importance such as accidents, tickets, and primary vehicle, but credit score is a useful tool.
How can you be bad at managing money and have alot of it? To me, someone that lives paycheck to paycheck is bad at managing his money, i dont care if he has an 800 credit score or not. If you have no cash in the bank, you are bad at managing your money. And why do people think that only drug dealers have money? Why cant i just have made good business decisions in my life? Personally i think its only drug users that think if you have money you must be a drug dealer.
BTW, everything the author whines about with respect to credit scores can be said for every other metric! One can be the victim of a series of unfortunate accidents and power mad police officers, accruing a driving record that would make even a Kennedy do a double take. So should we pass a law that says insurance companies should not be able to look at driving records?
I agree with you 1000%. What we need are MORE METRICS! An employer's business may suffer from hiring a person with a sweet tooth, so let's demand dental records as well. There's probably a correlation between gingervitus and bad driving, so the insurance companies will have to adjust rates accordingly...
You were at least partially the victim of liberalism. Evictions are notoriously expensive and lengthy. Check out this Express Eviction flowchart, and note that it can take over two and a half months to get a deadbeat moved out. http://www.expressevictions.com/flowchart.php If an apartment has no trouble filling new rentals, they will take steps to cut their risk. If you are renting units and you have one guy who's a minor risk, but you know that tomorrow another candidate will be in front of you that is lower, you'll take the lower risk. Since you (as wealthy landlord tycoon with multiple properties) cannot be in every office at every minute overseeing new leases, you set policy to minimize risk. Then you override it as circumstances change. Your agents are minimum wage flunkies who cannot follow a complex decision tree, so you set a credit score limit for new leases. If some complex is not filling up, you check into it. Maybe you relax the restrictions, maybe you personally review some marginal potential leases. But your job is not to house people, it's to earn a profit. If you keep your complex full and the number of problems low, you are on the right track. But why not charge a higher security deposit? You are happy to pay it to get a place to live. That'll reduce the risk, right? It would, but naturally it's against the law. California has laws about how big the security deposit can be (two months rent for unfurnished apartments, three for furnished). So their hands were tied. In order to make a profit running a budget conscious complex they could not lease to you even though you were not a real risk. Going a bit more upscale, you find agents with more flexibility.
Someone of high moral character won't have a bad credit score. And likewise a person of low moral character will have a low credit score. Thus, it can be assumed that "Mr. Cigar", being one of low moral character, not withstanding selling missile technology to China, has a low credit score. If this hypothesis is true, prospective presidents should be required to have high credit scores before being allowed to put their name on a presidential ballot.