How To Read A Credit Report

Your credit card report is your financial report. Your future transactions depend on this information. You may find yourself in a situation when you didnt get the job you were sure you would get, or that you were turned down for an apartment that you wanted to rent. You look for the reason, and realize it is because of the irregularities that are present in your credit card report.

When so much depends upon your credit report, it becomes imperative that you ensure that there are no negative errors in it. For this, first of all, you need to verify that all the information given in the credit report is correct. The information is classified into four categories.

Personal Information

This section of your credit report spells out your personal details such as your name, spouses name, your age, salary, current employers, and former employers. Dont simply assume your personal information mentioned is correct. Apart from checking these details, you also need to check that nothing is misspelled.

Reported Accounts

This section is further divided into two categories: monthly accounts and default accounts.

Monthly accounts

All financial organizations, insurance companies, departmental stores, oil and gas companies, and more report your credit history and these find mention in the monthly report section.

Default accounts

This section lists all the payments that you did not make. These may include telephone bills, electricity bills, installment etc. Again, you need to do a careful check of these accounts, as there may be chances that you made the payments, but they have been erroneously mentioned under this category.

Public Information

As the name itself suggests, this section of your report details information that is of public interest. This includes details of law suits, bankruptcies, court judgments, loans and debts. It is important for you to note that landlords, bankers, insurance companies, and prospective employers all check out your credit report. Any adverse information can prevent your getting the job or loan, as the case may be.

Inquiries

This section lists all the companies, banks, employers, and landlords, who have made inquiries about your credit report. Too many inquiries can result in a negative impression, as most lenders will assume that you are looking around for a lot of cash and so you might not be able to pay your installments.

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How To Fix Your Credit Report

Your credit report is your passport to obtaining loans, renting apartments, and getting employment and promotions. Any errors in your report and you will end up paying a higher premium on your insurance or a higher interest rate for loans.

Lets say the negative errors are there and you did not even realize it. Once you wake up to the fact, it is important that you fix them. If you feel the errors are inaccurate, then immediately submit your complaint in writing to any of the three CRAs: Equifax, Experian or Trans Union. These companies will then investigate with the information provider companies, and if the information is genuinely found to be inaccurate, they will delete the same from your report and also provide you with a copy of the same. Keep in mind that the investigation usually takes up to 30 days.

It is important to submit your complaint in writing. Also, you must submit a copy of the complaint to the information provider company. Keeping a record of your communications is very important and can be a source of legal evidence.

All this must be done even if you feel that the negative report contained errors stating you were the defaulter. Otherwise, you need to be very honest with yourself. The best thing to do is to study your financial situation carefully, and come up with a plan to pay back your dues. This may involve determining ways to pay back your bills in small installments.

Other options may include taking up a second job to meet your debts. Also, you can go for credit counseling and even file for bankruptcy, if the situation so arises. One other way to improve your report is to look for omissions. This means that you may have repaid some loans or bills and that information has not been added to the credit report. All this will help to improve your credit ratings to some extent.

Whichever way you look at it, you need to fix your credit report. If the errors are inaccurate, report them to any of the consumer reporting companies. If they are genuine, work out a plan to pay your debts. If you cannot do so, consider filing for bankruptcy.

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How Credit Report Inquires Affect Your Credit Rating

If you are like the vast majority of consumers, you understand how credit works, to a very limited extent. In other words, you have a line of credit somewhere, and as long as you do not exceed your credit limit and pay at least the minimum amount on time every month, everybody is happy. But there are some additional things about credit reports that you should know.

First of all, there are three major credit bureaus in the US – Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Each of them maintain a credit report on you, including all past and present credit accounts and your credit history. But they do not share information between them, so each credit bureau has a credit score for you that is different. That is because not all creditors report to all three bureaus; in fact, very few of them report to all three.

Beyond that, how do inquiries into your credit report affect your credit score, or does it have any effect at all? The answer is that it definitely has an effect, but the type of inquiry determines the level of effect. For example, if you yourself apply for a new line of credit somewhere like for a new car or at a department store, this has the largest effect on your credit score. If you are approved, then your credit score reflects the fact that you now have this new line of credit which has been approved and the very real potential to extend yourself too thinly.

Sometimes a credit card company has a new product or service that they want to alert people to, but just people who meet their criteria, which is aimed at the type of person that they have deemed most likely to be receptive to their new offering. This type of inquiry into your credit report is known as a soft inquiry, done without your permission or knowledge, just to see if you meet their criteria for sending their ad, and this type of soft inquiry has little to no effect on your credit score.

One of the other factors that can adversely affect your credit score is the number of “pulls” or inquiries on your credit report. Yes, even time an inquiry is made to your credit report, that fact is recorded and becomes a part of your credit report with that credit bureau, also indicating whether it was a “hard pull” or a “soft pull”. A large number of hard pulls on your credit report will definitely affect it negatively, especially if those pulls do not result in a similar number of newly approved lines of credit.

The time factor is also taken into account. For example, having 25 hard pulls on your credit report over a three year period of time is not necessarily bad, but having those same 25 pulls on your credit report over the course of two months is definitely going to set off a red flag with the credit bureau and negatively impact your credit score.

The bottom line is to not apply for credit ad hoc and at every opportunity. While it may result in a new line of credit, it may also lower your credit score to the point where those new accounts are actually COSTING your more via a lower credit score than they are really worth to you.

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Your Credit Report Score Has Errors – Fix It Or Get Over It

It probably comes as no surprise to most people that “somewhere” there is a credit report on them that knows everything they ever did, good and bad, financially. Unfortunately, this is where their knowledge stops though, and not knowing the real scoop about how this really works is actually hurting them.

There are three companies that keep track of your financial and credit history, which are Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. They know more about you than you think or perhaps are even comfortable with, but that’s what it is. They compete with each other so they do not share information between them. Some lenders report to one of them every month, other lenders report to another one, and large financial obligations like your mortgage probably report to two of them or even all three.

So far no news alerts but it gets worse. They are in business for profit, so they want to get as many lenders as possible to report to them for their customer’s credit information. They occasionally have specials for lenders to switch to them, so Discover may have reported to Experian last year and this year they report to TransUnion, and your Exxon account may have reported to Experian last year and now reports to TransUnion. This type of change occurs on a very regular basis.

Are you starting to see where a problem could (and does) occur? What happens is that not one of these credit reporting agencies really has a complete and accurate credit picture about you. Further, when a creditor of yours who reported to one agency that you were past due and then switches to another credit reporting agency, the first credit reporting agency continues to report you as being past due on that account because they never get corrected information.

The truth is that studies have shown that the majority of people in the US have at least one inaccurate item on their credit reports. That is almost a guarantee that there are errors on your credit report. The impact of those errors means that your credit score is being calculated lower than it really should be, which means that you are paying higher interest rates than you could be, as well as the other areas of your life a credit report affects.

There is no self-correct mechanism built into the system, and these errors will never be corrected unless YOU do it. There are right and wrong ways to get this information corrected and if you don’t do it right, you could make it even worse. You need to make your dispute be legitimate, not frivolous. There are a lot of people out there with accurate negative information on their credit report who are disputing that information with the credit bureaus in the hopes that even though it is accurate, it will disappear. You on the other hand have a legitimate beef that you want incorrect information corrected.

There is no sense in having inaccurate information about you being reported as accurate and factual. Get it corrected, and this is something you can do yourself, where you do not need to spend money on a “credit fix”. This is entirely legal, and is indeed your responsibility. You are only hurting yourself if you don’t get this done.

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Free Credit Reports – Take Full Advantage Of The Free Credit Report!

When a company is deciding whether or not to give you a loan, a mortgage or a credit card it checks your credit report. Your credit report contains information about every credit transaction you have made. If you failed to make a payment or defaulted on a loan then it will be on your credit report.

Until the US government brought in legislation to make this information freely available to you only finance companies, banks and mortgage lenders could see it. Now you are entitled to see it too.

The FACT Act made it possible to see your credit record for free every year for the first time. You need no longer be in the dark about what the finance companies know about you.

This is information about you and it is your right to see it. You should make use of that right because it affects your ability to get loans, credit cards and mortgages. If you are refused credit is probably because of something in your credit report.

There may be mistakes in your credit report that are stopping you from getting a loan. Someone may have fraudulently used your identity to take out a credit card or loan which they have not paid. You will then be left with a bad credit report that is not your fault.

There are three companies that compile credit reports. You can only get to see one of those reports for free. But if there are mistakes in that one then it will be worth your while to pay for the other two.

Not all the credit reporting companies have exactly the same information. They compile their data in slightly different ways.

Once you have seen the report and checked it against your own records you can correct inaccuracies any inaccuracies it may contain. There is a facility on the websites of the credit reporting companies for you to inform them of mistakes in your report. You will have to produce written evidence such as bank statements or credit card statements. But the process is quite simple.

By correcting inaccuracies in your credit report you are protecting your credit score. Even one mistake can make the difference between getting a loan and being refused credit.

All Americans can now get a free credit report every year. It is a responsible financial practice to take advantage of this opportunity. By doing so you are taking control of your own finances.

You can guard against identity theft, you can correct errors, and you can see if your credit score is falling because you have a pattern of late payments. It is in your interests to maintain a good credit score. If you check your credit record every year you can address problems as they arise.

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