When my boyfriend and I first met, he had a list of personal questions that he asked me out the gate. At the top of the list was a question about my credit score. I embellished a tad and told him it was in the low seven hundreds when it was really in the high fives. I didn’t think much of it then, but it has come back full circle to bite me in the butt.
Last month, my boyfriend proposed while we were on vacation in the Dominican Republic — Punta Cana to be exact. He had an elaborate scheme all planned out, and I was none the wiser. The romantic proposal was the perfect end to a perfect vacation, and we both came home refreshed and renewed.
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A few days later, I was all set to talk about our wedding plans and starting that whole process, but he brought up the nasty ‘C’ word again for the first time since we met; CREDIT. Ugh. He suggested that we both pull our credit reports from all three agencies so we could get a baseline of where we both stood. My stomach was doing flips on the inside, but I tried to maintain a stoic look on my face.
I wanted to tell him right then and there that my credit score is much lower than the one I quoted him, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. He has big plans for us to put our finances together to start saving to purchase a home, and he has no idea, not the slightest inkling, that I’ve had financial challenges in the past including a bankruptcy that is only four years old. Should I tell him about my credit woes now or just wait until my credit reports arrive and act surprised?
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