What's In Your Credit Report?

Your credit report is a snap shot of your financial history. It shows the amount of credit that has been given to you. As well as your attitude towards this credit. It shows your over all “credit worthiness”. It is also the biggest determining factor of whether or not you will qualify for a mortgage and what interest rates you will get.

Your credit report will contain the following information:

Personal Information
Name
Address
Social Security Number
Previous employers
Previous addresses
Birth date
Nick names or aliases

Credit History
Open Credit – lists all creditors currently reporting to the credit bureaus; including account number, date opened, loan amount, current balance, monthly payment.

Closed Credit- same as above with the exception that the accounts have been closed by either the creditor or the consumer.

Derogatory Credit – lists creditors with whom you have had late payments, collections, charge off’s, repossessions, or foreclosures with.

Public Records
Judgements
Liens
Bankruptcy
Overdue child support
Most lenders will require any of the above to have been satisfied before they will fund your loan.

Inquiries
Lists all inquiries on your credit for the last 90 days.
Multiple inquiries on your credit can drop your credit score significantly.

List of Creditors
Lists all the creditors you have ever done business with including their name, address, and phone number.

This is especially helpful if you need to contact any of your creditors to correct or delete information off of your report.

Credit Score
Not all credit reports contain this information. If you are planning on ordering your own credit report make sure to order one with the credit score. You can have a credit score of 0 if you have never had credit. Or you can have a score between 350 to 850 with 850 being the highest credit score you can get.

Click on Credit Score to see how credit scores are determined.

To learn your rights as a consumer and for more information on credit reports please check out http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fcra.htm