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While I am a devotee of the ShamWow guy and the Snuggie lady, I have a major problem with the FreeCreditReport.com commercials. Specifically, the commercial in which a man plays guitar and laments that his new wife has a low credit score, and if he had known this before he started courting her, he would have never loved her and could have pursued a happy life.
In case you need to get up to speed, here’s a link that includes a montage of all six of the commercials. (I remain astounded that there are people out there with enough free time to create online commercial montages.)
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His song, simply composed, states: “Well, I married my dream girl. But she didn’t tell me that her credit was bad. So now instead of living in a pleasant suburb, we’re living in the basement at her mom and dad’s.”
First of all, I hate to break it to the fellow, but the ‘burbs ain’t pleasant. Anyone who has spent time in Westminster knows what I’m talking about.
He continues: “If we’d gone to FreeCreditReport.com, I’d be a happy bachelor with a dog and a yard.”
Despite my initial concern that “com” and “yard” have no business rhyming, I think this fellow should know that you can have a dog without having great credit. He really should meet all my friends.
These commercials are a really cheap way of looking at the complexities of how couples work out money issues. After you get past the I’ll-get-the-bill-this-time stage, things can get legitimately complicated as you figure out who will pay the energy bill when one of you gets laid off. Let alone how daunting it is to create financial goals as a team.
Tonight, there’s a much more grown-up take on couples and finances–a reading and signing of First Comes Love, Then Comes Money: A Couple’s Guide to Financial Communication at the Tattered Cover Highlands Ranch, 9315 Dorchester St., at 7:30 p.m. The book is co-authored by Bethany and Scott Palmer, known as the “money couple.” (They previously penned Cents and Sensibility: How Couples Can Agree About Money.)
The event is free and the book is $15–not a bad investment if you and your sweetie are arguing about cash flow, savings, and whose money is whose at the end of the day. And, from what I can tell, neither author will be bringing a guitar and convincing you to live a lonely life in the suburbs.