What Is a Credit Report?
The company that provided you with the loan or credit keeps track of how much and how frequently you pay, as well as the credit limits and loan balances, when you make a payment on it. This forms the basis of your credit report. Your credit, loan, and payment history may be reported to one or more credit reporting companies by those businesses and other sources.
Each credit reporting company compiles the data they learn about your various credit, loan, and payment activities into a credit report. A credit report is essentially a report card for your credit history. Potential lenders typically use it to assess the riskiness of lending you money, which is essentially the likelihood that you will repay the loan on time.
How to Get a Credit Report
Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion are credit bureaus or credit-reporting companies that will disclose your information to any firm that is contemplating offering you a loan or credit account. These reports are also available for free at https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action. Because these bureaus operate independently, their reports may differ slightly based on the information provided by the lenders they used.
Keep in mind that each of the major credit-reporting agencies mentioned above will provide you with one free copy of your credit report each year. However, you must request the reports; they are not automatically mailed to you. Additionally, it’s worthwhile to check all of the information about you that each agency has on file. You may even stagger them so that you get a free report virtually every quarter if you time it well.
How to Read Your Credit Report
A credit report includes the following information:
The first category is your identifying personal information, which includes your name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, and phone number. Make certain that everything in this section refers to you and not to someone else who shares your name.
Following that comes your credit history, which comprises the majority of the report in this part. Your credit history contains the following items: Credit accounts, such as credit cards, mortgages, and loans, that have been opened and paid off, Accounts shared with another person, Loan amounts in total, Loan balances that are still outstanding, Payments that are late.
Accounts that have been referred to collection. Check and double-check this area to ensure that everything listed is correct. The report also includes any bankruptcies or missed/late payments, among other things. It also involves credit inquiries which will require its own article, which I will address later.
Where Can I Find My Credit Score?
Credit scores are normally presented as a number between 300 and 850. Scores within that range are usually classified into one of five categories: poor, fair, good, very good, and excellent.
Credit scores are the outcome of mathematical formulae that take information from your credit report to create a value that indicates your likelihood of paying your obligations in the future. Businesses use credit ratings to predict your ability to repay loans or services.
Higher credit scores may increase a person’s likelihood of repaying their debts. It’s possible that people with lower credit scores are less likely to make debt payments. Information in your credit report serves as the basis for a credit score. How much money you owe, how long you’ve owed it, your number of new accounts, the frequency of missed or late payments, and the type of credit accounts you have are a few considerations. A score may increase or decrease as a result of changes in any one of those factors.
Conclusion
Credit reports may appear confusing, but they may be an effective tool for boosting your credit score. However, keep in mind that negative items, such as past-due payments and collections, can stay on your credit report for up to seven years, and bankruptcies can stay for up to ten years. Checking your credit report on a regular basis will help you create a stronger credit history, which can aid you later on when looking for new loans or lines of credit.
