A Look At Credit Reports And How To Read Them

Have you been looking at you credit report. You may be wondering how to read it. Well here is a simple look at credit reports and how to read them so you understand what is there.

For most people a credit report is broken down into four main parts. When you take a look at the first part of the credit report you will see everything that can identify you as the person that is being reported on. How you read this is you just look over the information and make sure that the information is correct and about you. Here you will read your name, social security number, your spouse if there is one, where you work, your date of birth, your address and phone numbers. A look at this portion of a credit report is a good idea.

The next portion of a credit report you will need to look at is the credit history portion. This is what they call the meat of the credit report and you will want to know how to read some of the abbreviations that they may put in this section. There are three main credit-reporting agencies and they all may mark the credit history section of a credit report differently.

One credit-reporting agency may write out information about the accounts listed here in the credit history. Another agency may use mostly letters and numbers to indicate the status of an account. These letters and numbers will be in a column of some sorts and will have a heading. As you look down through the list of accounts that you have, you may see some I’s or J’s in the whose account column, this will indicate if you have the account by yourself, as an “i”ndividual, or if it is a “j”oint account with someone else. You most likely know who is on the account but this is helpful for lender to see.

Also when you look at your account you may see some numbers in a long line. Some numbers may be in a short line. These numbers will range from 0-9 and are an indicator of what types of payments you have made for each account you have. A 0 is the best, showing that you have made all payments on time and were never behind on any payment. How to read these numbers is that there will be a number for each month that the account has been opened.

The credit history section will have a lot more information but most of it falls right under the column that explains what the information is. Like there is a column for original terms of the loan, so for a 30-year house loan there will be 360 months in that column. It will have the balance and original loan amount. There will be the lender and account number, but not always all of the account number, for security. It will show here in the credit history whether or not you are delinquent on this account or current.

Take a look at the next section and make sure nothing is wrong here. This is where any bankruptcies or collections show up. Make sure when you read this portion you know what should or should not be there.

The last section to look at on a credit report is the inquiry portion. Here all there is to read is who has made inquiries into your credit history this list can get very long if you have had a lot of credit checks.

When you take a look at credit reports and know how to read them you can understand that you can control your credit and have a good report. You can read the four main portions of the credit report and know what purpose they have and how to read them.