Abuse of power.

Credit. A controversial subject.

Back in 2002 on the night before my 22nd birthday I had congestive lung failure. Long story short, I smoked 3 packs a day, smoked a lot of grass, and on top of it all, I worked in an environment where I was sucking down concrete dust all day, every day, and I never wore a respirator or a mask or anything.

It was fairly serious. I couldn't work for 18 months after that, as my lungs were healing up, and I was going through some serious recovery issues in terms of health. I ended up having hospital and doctor bills over 20 thousand dollars. At the time I had 16 thousand dollars saved up in my savings account, and every penny went to pay for bills, as my employer didn't cover me with health insurance and I had never bothered getting it, believing at the time that I was invincible.

As a result I ended up getting my vehicle repossessed after I was unable to pay the payments on it, and I ended up with a few thousand more that I couldn't pay to the hospital system. Enter bad credit.

My health improved, I went back to work (wearing a respirator around dust this time!) and I had quit smoking. I bought a new vehicle, and when I went to get insurance on it, I was shocked to find out that my credit could affect more than just my ability to get a loan. When the lady initially quoted me 80 dollars a month on full coverage insurance, she called me back 15 minutes later and said that because my credit was bad, my rates were going to be 300 dollars a month.

!?!?!

The system didn't care that I had a health reason for my credit. They lumped me in with all the people who don't pay their bills because of drug addiction, lazy attitudes, or because they are welfare abusers. And all of a sudden I found myself being judged because of a rating that I hadn't previously ever been affected by, because I had always been a pay-your-bills-on-time kind of guy. I still am. Always have been. The only time I didn't was when I had a health crisis that kept me from working.

The worst was when I first went back to work. I had a six thousand dollar check in hand from my first job after coming back into the industry and I was in a new city and needed a new bank account, since my old account was 4 hours down the mountain. I went into the first bank I found. Imagine my surprise when they told me I couldn't open up a checking account. When I asked why, they said that my credit was bad.

The next 4 banks I went to did the same thing. Sorry. Doesn't matter that you have a 6 thousand dollar check in your hand. We can't give you a checking account, because you are a BAD PERSON! FINANCIALLY IRRESPONSIBLE! We don't care that you had a health reason for your unpaid bills. YOU ARE NAUGHTY!

Finally Wells Fargo let me start an account. I've been with them since 2004. And it's been a long climb out of that hell-hole that is bad credit. It took me 5 years, but as of right now I'm over 700 on the credit rating, which is pretty good compared to the really bad number I had a few years back.

My issue with the credit system is that it's abused. It should only be used to determine whether or not you are a financial risk when it comes to loaning you money. Instead, companies use it as a way to judge your character. This is wrong! People have all sorts of reasons for why their credit is "bad", and not all of them are just because people are "bad" people. Especially in today's climate where people are losing their jobs left and right, their wages are getting cut, and people are having to make decisions like whether or not to buy groceries for the kids, put a tank of gas in the car to get to work, or pay the electric bill to keep the heat on.

I stumbled across this article the other day and it made me sick to my stomach.

Employers using your credit rating to determine whether or not you are a responsible person? The one that really made me sort of puke in my mouth was the example about the college kid explaining why his credit rating was poor. His response to the interviewer was "I'm sorry I was a bad person and extended myself too far. Please forgive me for being a bad person. It was wrong of me to do such a thing".

Are you joking? We've got people like Madoff doing pyramid schemes for billions of dollars, AIG execs living abroad and making millions on bad management schemes, and a college kid has to worry about whether or not he forgot to pay his beer tab? And the one about opening up a line of credit at Vickys and having your bra and panty tab be considered as to whether or not you are socially responsible is just...laughable.

Does anyone else out there think that the credit system is out of whack? I totally support it for what its intended purpose was for...seeing how much your debt to income ratio is and figuring out if you are a delinquent payer or not on a frequent basis...but isn't it going too far when employers, insurance companies, banks, and others can look at that number and attempt to put a LABEL on you?

Score below 700? BAD PERSON! NO JOB FOR YOU! HIGHER INSURANCE RATES FOR YOU! Score above 700? Welcome welcome, would you like a towel? How about a beer? Some chocolate? Enjoy our low, premium rates, higher income bracket, and lower taxes because you are a fiscally responsible person! Score below 400? GO TO JAIL, YOU CRIMINAL!

I'm appalled. Happier and happier every day that I don't live in the States anymore.