You’re in love. He’s perfect. Finally, a man who shares your values about life, work, children, family.You want to spend the rest of your life with him.
So now it’s time to talk about money, you know, beliefs, attitudes, expectations  and yes, FICO scores.

What's a FICO score? It's your rating by the three major credit reporting agencies about your credit history. Your reliability, your timeliness, how much you buy on credit and how well you repay it. In other words, the way you manage your financial life.

How boring. Where do credit ratings fit into this picture of love? This is the conversation you really don’t want to have. But you have to have it.

Say your score is 815. His is 682. FICO scores don’t lie. You're a good credit risk and he's not. His history with money is very different from yours...and so much of your shared future involves how you handle money.

Credit scores are a fast transparent look at how we conduct our money life. How much credit do we use? How much do we owe? How promptly do we repay our loans? How much do we repay at a time? How many late charges do we incur? What is our interest rate?

You know a lower FICO score equals a higher risk for lenders. That means higher interest rates for insurance, mortgages, credit lines. No, they don’t really know the man you love, and if they did, they’d know how perfect he is for you.

But maybe those lenders know something you don't. They’ve seen millions of people raise their FICO score when they start paying attention to the details. It would be a great idea, before you say “I Do”, to have this man you love demonstrate to you that he can raise his credit score.

It may not be romantic, but it’s definitely intimate…and a lot safer.