Finding Nemo's FICO score

There this game called Fishy that is fairly simple and highly addictive. You start out a tiny goldfish, and you have to eat things smaller than you while avoiding things bigger than you. With much patience and practice you begin amassing enough small fish to grow larger and eventually you're bigger than everything else. It takes forever to win and you can lose in a heatbeat (it took me two days to beat the game, after losing 20-30 times).

I've been shopping for my first home lately and for some reason the game feels like a metaphor for the average american's financial life. You are born broke, and told to save your pennies for decades (by the way, whatever happened to my childhood savings account with 50 bucks in it?) until one day you can own that perfect million dollar place. But one tiny missed student loan payment, one forgotten video rental at Blockbuster, or one too many credit card bills and your chances of getting that perfect place go poof, just like ol' Fishy.