The Ins and Outs

Your Credit Report

Acquiring your credit report is easy. Reading it is a little more difficult. A credit report is stuffed with information. It tells the tale of your obligations, if you make regular payments, about your loans, other public records, and collection records, the history of your employment, and old and new addresses. There’s a load of credit information to go over. You need to study it in detail if you want to buy a house a car, any large purchase.

There is a parade of people scrutinizing your credit report. They include banks, lenders, credit card companies, insurance companies, potential employers, landlords, utility and cell phone companies. According to The Fair Credit Reporting Act a person or company has to have a permissible use can see your credit information. You can get a free credit report from the three big credit report agencies TransUnion, Equifax and Experian by calling1-877-322-8228 or visiting www.AnnualCreditReport.com. You can get a report once a year.

What are public records? That is information on record about you that is collected by government authorities like a tax lien on your property, criminal records, and bankruptcy. Adverse information on your public record doesn’t stop you from obtaining a loan, but you probably won’t have an “A” borrower rating. When five years have gone by a low credit can usually be repaired.

Most people have an error on their credit report at least once. These are some typical errors to look for: Is the social security number right? The birth date? One of these errors might indicate someone else’s credit information is mixed up with your data. Are all of the former addresses and jobs correct? If a lot of this credit information is wrong again your data could be mixed in with somebody else’s and it might even mean that someone is attempting identify theft. They may be trying to obtain credit with your name. In the personal information part of the credit report you can tell the details of any identity theft that has victimized you.

What is the consumer statement? This is the area of the report where you can have your say about negative data that is accurate. You can explain that you missed payments on a debt as a result of job loss of sickness. If you failed to pay because you had a disagreement with a business this is the place to tell you’re why you thought you should not pay.

Look over the public records part of your credit report carefully. It includes any information about you that is filed in federal and state courts. If there is any bad information it will stay on file for seven years, bankruptcy for as long as ten years and tax liens not paid fifteen years.

Look at the reports of all three credit-reporting agencies because one will have information another doesn’t creditors don’t necessarily report all of them. Peruse all of them to get a clear credit information picture of your situation.