What Is On A Credit Report And What It Means.

When you look at a credit report you may wonder what it all means. What is on a credit report is all the information you could possibly think of for any credit line or loan you have ever had. Well everything doesn’t stay on there forever. What is all means if that you have good or bad credit or a score somewhere in between.

What is on a credit report is an identity section for the individual that the report is about. What it means is that you are who all the accounts think you are. Look over this section and make sure that there are no identify problems here with other people who may have your same name or similar social security number.

You should know that if there is some problem in this area it will probably not be taken off this section of the report. If there is an identity problem you will need to look at the next section, credit history, and correct anything there that was not of your doing. The credit-reporting agencies will not change the information on the identity portion of the credit report because it may mess up the “trail” that is associated with your name and numbers.

The next section is the meat of the credit report. This means that this is where all your account information is. It will show what kind of payments you have been making and what date you opened the account. It will show if it is just you on the account or if you are a co-signer. What is here on a credit report is what lenders like to look at. They like to see a payment history that has good marks. This means that you will want some ones on your accounts payments history. The ones will indicate that you pay on time and are current on all the payments you have.

This section will have the term of the loan and when you opened the account and if the account is for a mortgage or a credit card. The lender will be in this section and so will the account number and whether the account is active or delinquent. All this means that you have good credit or bad credit. They will give you a credit score based mostly on the information here and on the next section.

The third section is where you will see any kind of bankruptcies, or if any account had to have collections on them or if you have had to go to court for any account. What is on this section of a credit report will stay for up to 10 years. This means that you want to keep this section blank.

The fourth and last section of a credit report is the inquiry section of the credit report. What this means is that all the inquires that have been made concerning your credit score or history will show up here. You may have a lot or you may have only a few. This section will affect your overall credit score, but is a much smaller portion of the score than the second and third section of the credit report. If you are applying for a mortgage loan and you have 5 banks check your credit in a week, it will actually show up and count as one inquiry and not 5. This does help when you are house or car loan hunting.

So what is on a credit report and what it means, will greatly affect your credit score. There is a list of all your information, including where you work. There is a complete list of all credit accounts you have currently, and even some that have been closed. There will be a record of any account that went to court or that was delinquent. Then you will have the list of all those that have made an inquiry of your credit history.