Fair Isaac

If you find yourself in a bookstore, in need of a decent magazine, I suggest the January issue of Men's Journal (has Jack Nicholson on the cover). There's a good, fun article about the Antarctica Marathon in it. Here's a taste:

"Perhaps the absurdity of running a marathon here makes a strange sort of sense. Maybe putting yourself through a few hours of minor hell is a way to get a taste of the continent's former harshness. Now, in 2007, we passengers of the Akademik Sergey Vavilov are preparing to endure hours of discomfort for a chance to run where penguins waddle.

A confession: The first time I see penguins in the wild, I cry. My hands are resting on my knees, and the penguin cocks its head, eyes me with apparent curiosity, then leans over and bites my finger. That's when I cry. It isn't because of the pain, since the penguin either has a weak jaw or is just being gentle. And it isn't because of any communing-with-nature sentimentality. I cry because of the overwhelming stink. The smell of penguin shit, which we'd caught all the way on the Vavilov, is almost a physical presence here. Kneeling as I am, so close to so much of it, the ammonia stench fills my eyes and blurs the world until my finger-biting buddy becomes just a fuzzy blubbery blob."

Touching! There's some serious nut jobs who run this race. My favorite are the people for whom the Seven Continent's club (a marathon on all seven continents) is not enough. Those people are trying for the Seven and Seven Club: run a marathon on every continent, and climb the highest peak on each as well. The author claims to have barely done any running prior to the event, but yet he finished 58th out of 145 with a time of five hours and 38 minutes. I should never say never, as I do really like to run in the cold!

On a financial note, it's a good time to check up on your credit. Actually, it's no better time than any other, but this is one of the times a year I do it, so there you go, a good time! annualcreditreport.com is the place. If you've never done this, you need to know that you will not, for free at least, get a credit score. You will get any negative comments, a brief description of your credit accounts, the addresses the agency things you've lived at, and so on. While this is useful, for about $5, you get some additional information that makes it even more useful; your VantageScore Report.

VantageScore is not your FICO score, let's be clear. FICO is created by a company called Fair Isaac, and everytime that score is used in a credit application, Fair Isaac get some action. The credit bureaus would prefer that said action comes their way, so they created VantageScore to compete. As of now, it's been a complete failure! Though no one really uses VantageScore, this much is believed to be fact: if your VantageScore is good (they'll tell you whether it is or not) so if your FICO score.

So by leveraging one free credit report FROM EACH OF THE THREE credit bureaus each year, and by dishing out $5 each time for your VantageScore, you can keep a good handle on your credit every four months (Experian in December, TransUnion in April, and Equifax in August). Some people spend about $100 a year for an active credit monitoring service, but I think the risk/reward of monitoring your credit this way is better. For the record, my VantageScore, which has a scale up to 990, went up ... THREE POINTS! Oh well, at least it didn't go down.

Now go forth with your good credit, and buy gifts!