Schrodinger's Credit Score

In 1935, to demonstrate a potential issue with one of the more mind-boggling parts of quantum physics, Erwin Schrodinger introduced the world to Schrodinger's Cat. Since I don't want to be responsible for anyone having to clean up exploded brains out of a keyboard, I'll skip over the exact setup of the thought experiment that ends up with a cat that is simultaneously alive and dead. Here's a link if you want to have your head spin. There are many interpretations of what happens with the cat to reconcile the theoretical both-alive-and-deadness of the cat with humanity's experience, gained through several millennia of cat domestication, that a cat can be alive or dead, but not both. One of these interpretations is that observation makes the cat settle into a state of alive or dead, so that looking into the box effectively kills the cat 50% of the time.

Which brings me to our current effort to refinance the mortgage on The Rookery. I'm shopping around for the best terms right now, and a major factor in the relative non-suckiness of the terms of the new mortgage is our credit scores. FICO has those locked up in a box with Schrodinger's Cat, except that in Schrodinger's scenario, there is a 50% chance of the cat being just fine. In order for the mortgage lenders to access our credit scores, they have to make an inquiry; however, making an inquiry puts a minor ding against one of the elements that factors into what that score will be. In the department of non-reassurance, FICO's FAQs say, “If it does [drop], it probably won't drop by much...most credit scores are not affected by multiple inquiries from auto or mortgage lenders within a short period of time."