Five Quirks That Can Crush Your Credit Score!

            Your credit score is more than just your good name.  It's your ticket to the American Dream, since very few of us can achieve our financial goals without borrowing gobs of money from others.  Here are five little-known pitfalls to avoid if you want to buy more with a high score:

            Cats:  Strange as it may seem, credit card companies and big banks are prejudiced against cat owners—and it's legal!  "Cat owners tend to be introverted, with poor social skills," says Boston Federal Reserve consumer credit specialist Lynn Beall.  "They're not the ones who are going to get the promotions and the big bonuses," she says.  "They want to go home at night and snuggle with their kitties, not clink cocktail glasses with business colleagues."  The Fed is working with Congress on a bill that would make denial of credit based on cat ownership as verboten as race or sex discrimination.

            Library Fines:  Did you lose a Hardy Boys mystery over summer vacation twenty years ago?  Loan your copy of "My Friend Flicka" to Nancy Racunas, only to go wobbly when she batted her eyelashes and said "What a nice present—thank you!"  Many local libraries now sell their fines for up-front cash to investors, who use bare-knuckle tactics to collect them.  "Sure two cents a day don't seem like much," said Louie "The Horse" Manicotti, an enforcer for the Gamboni crime family of Ho Ho Kus, New Jersey, "but you compound that daily over twenty years at 18% a day, and it's somethin' worth breakin' somebody's leg over."

            Lower class names:  Veneta Sue Hicks is a striking brunette who works as a receptionist at Jim Bob's Catfish Shack in Eldon, Missouri.  She makes over $12 an hour, and still can't obtain a charge card from Continental Midwest Bank in Chicago because of "Double Country Name Stigma".  "We just laugh when we get applications from hayseeds," said Evan Downing, an assistant vice president in consumer lending.  "What's she going to pay us with—pork bellies?"

            Alien Abductions:  Ever been hijacked and taken to the THX 114yZ spiral galaxy just south of Andromeda?  If so, you may want to keep quiet about it.  "Lenders are constantly on the lookout for tipoffs that you may skip out on them," says William Froeb, an analyst for credit reporting giant Omnipresence, Inc.  "Once people realize how boring life is on Earth, they take off and don't leave a forwarding address."  Froeb estimates that alien abductions cost U.S. credit card companies several million dollars a year.  "I just spoke to a guy's sister who said he couldn't come to the phone because he was being probed by greenish-purple beings with gigantic frontal lobes," he says.  "It's happening more and more."

            Not Paying Bills on Time:  This is the real stunner, says consumer columnist Beth Pullman.  "I've been telling my readers for years not to pay their bills until the very last day.  You save pennies every year on finance charges, which you can then use to buy a can of diet soda for New Year's Eve."  What Beth didn't realize is that companies that are owed money like to receive it on time, and report you to credit bureaus if you string them out.  "They all talk to each other, like it's junior high school or something," she noted with surprise. "You could have knocked me over with a feather," Pullman says, "or maybe a credit card."

 Copyright 2006, Con Chapman