Over at the U.S. central bank, the jury's still out on whether inflation's set to trend back towards policy makers' 2 percent target.
But a new working paper published at the Federal Reserve Board draws some conclusions that might help prevent your heart from deflating.
Let's just say you'll never look at "credit unions" the same way again.
Economists Jane Dokko, Geng Li, and Jessica Hayes presented their findings about the role that credit scores have in predicting the stability and potential longevity of a relationship that's starting to get serious.
The trio scoured quarterly data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Consumer Credit Panel, based on information provided by Equifax that includes a "risk score" similar to the more commonly-known FICO measure of an individual's probability of failing to meet their credit obligations in the not-too- distant future. Because personal identifiers are stripped from the data by Equifax prior to delivery, the researchers are agnostic as to whether the couples they identify are married or merely cohabiting.
"In light of the growing prominence of credit scores in households’ economic and financial opportunities, we are interested in their role in household formation and dissolution," they write, noting that their analysis centers on the initial match in credit scores and quality at the time a committed relationship begins.
The start of a committed relationship is marked by the quarter in which two individuals who did not share an address begin to do so, and, for the purposes of this study, requires that they live together for a minimum of one year. Other filters are applied to the data in attempt to minimize false positives.
Here's a summary of their findings:
* People with higher credit scores are more likely to be in a committed relationship and stay together
* People tend to form relationships with others who have a similar credit score as them