Tag Archives: credit score

Credit Rating

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Credit Rating: a classification of credit risk based on investigation of a potential customer’s financial resources

You’ve probably never thought of it—or maybe you have—but shall we refer to it today as “the big four questions?”

The answers to these questions determine your suitability, respectability and popularity in our society.

  1. Are you skinny?
  2. Are you wealthy?
  3. Are you hip with the trends?

And question four:

Do you have a good credit rating?

We are so intense on question four that we have a number assigned to it, and that particular number determines whether you are considered to be “up and coming” or “down and trodden.”

While everyone is terribly concerned about racial inequality in this country, nobody is in the least troubled about the potential of judging another by turning to everyone and whispering, “He’s a 493…”

At that point, we are all supposed to understand that this person is either extraordinarily unlucky, a criminal or has absolutely no sense of what to do with a dollar bill.

Could there be a greater condemnation? After all, you can have black skin and put on a beautiful suit of clothes, walk into a room speaking great King’s English and even the white supremacists have to comment, “He’s one of the good ones.”

But if you walk in a room with a low credit score, it doesn’t matter what color your skin is, the condition of your clothes, your sparkling attitude or your smile.

You are a credit risk.

Therefore you are a social leper and a cultural bewilderment—similar to having financial AIDS.

That fact that this is the acceptable way we conduct business in this capitalistic climate does not seem to bother anyone.

There are many reasons you can have good credit.

There are even more reasons you can end up with bad credit.

I do not think we should do away with the system—but I think we should make sure that the system doesn’t do away with us.

 

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Beggar

Dictionary B

Beggar: (n) a person, typically a homeless one, who lives by asking for money or food.

I was always curious what was meant by the word “chooser.”

You know–the classic closer on the phrase, “beggars can’t be…” culminating with the object, “…choosers.”

So much is made of choice.

We extol it as a symbol of our control, prowess and independence. But an amazing percentage of the events that transpire in our lives provide us no opportunity to choose, and often make us look like beggars.

People diagnosed with cancer have certainly not been given a chance to select a disease, and suddenly find themselves beggars to the doctor–and if they happen to be individuals of faith, on their knees, begging the heavens.

I guess we’re afraid of the word beggar, because no one wants to be beggarly. As Webster has proven in the definition provided for us today, we relegate being a beggar to the bedraggled homeless element in our society, who should be grateful for our pocket change, while no real change is ever offered to them.

Are they just destined to be poor?

I don’t think anyone is a beggar unless we treat him like a beggar.

If you have a five-year-old child and you take him to the store, and you haven’t provided a plan to give him a treat, you will end up with a little beggar on your hands.

If you’re a well-employed, successful individual who wants to purchase a house, but find yourself a few points deficient in your credit score, you may very well turn into a beggar in front of your loan officer.

So perhaps a beggar is not a position, but rather, a judgment we lay on each other when we want to feel superior and make another feel inferior.

For instance, my children will still come to me, asking for money. I have a choice. I can roll my eyes and be disgusted that they have the audacity to request finance from me, or I can make sure to remove all the elements of “beggar” from their consciousness, and let them know how delighted I am to be of assistance.

Last week I gave five dollars to a gentleman sitting alongside the road. Feeling he had a role to play, he began to grovel and feign tears in an attempt to prove to me that I was his superior and he, the dependent.

I refused to be part of the play.

I told him it was my blessing–that I hoped that in some small way he would be able to use it to brighten his day.

I took the “beggar” out of the definition … and gave him the chance to just be a man who I was able to assist.

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