Reading Your Credit Report
Keeping your credit in good shape means understanding what it’s made of. Grab a copy of your credit report and dig in!
If you are looking to buy a house, make a big financial move or have decided to start improving your credit your first step will always be requesting and reviewing your credit report. Every American is entitled to their credit report once per year through the FTC. You can request by phone, mail or online through the website.
But once you have the document, what do you need to look for?
Review Personal & Account Information
The first thing you should be looking at is your own personal and account information. Is everything correct? Are there any updates that need to be made? An important part in this step is making sure all of your accounts are on there and accurate.
The inclusion of all your accounts will allow you to see if there have been any additional accounts opened in your name as well as accounts you may think are closed but remain open. Both of these things can have a huge impact on your credit.
Go Over Inquiries & New Accounts
Every time you apply for a new card or loan your report will log an inquiry. Make sure that inquires are correct and accounted for. If you see more inquiries than you have made then someone might have tried to open a card in your name. This log will show all activity that has been done in your name.
Check For Mistakes
This is the hard part. Mistakes can be anywhere on your credit report and can vary from huge and obvious to small and easy to overlook. A few things to look for is payments marked late that were on-time, the same debt accounted for more than once, accounts that aren’t actually yours and negative items that should have aged off your report that are still included.
This exercise will require a very detailed reading checking numbers and dates. For most people this is something that takes time or simply seems impossible. Luckily this is exactly what companies like us are for - weeding through the details to identify those actionable errors.
Fixing your credit can be as simple as making a call! We're here to help you rebuild and understand your credit. Give us a call to get started or learn more about what we can do for you 1-800-431-0449.