Reading your credit reports

So your ready to understand all this stuff on your credit report.

A credit report is basically divided into four sections: identifying information, credit history, public records and inquiries.

Identifying Information

Identifying information is just that -- information to identify you. Look at it closely to make sure it's accurate. It's not unusual, Expert says, for there to be two or three spellings of your name or more than one Social Security number.

Other information might include your current and previous addresses, your date of birth, telephone numbers, driver's license numbers, your employer and your spouse's name.

Every time you apply for a loan application you could see that old address on your report or old employer.

Don't be surprised to see information no longer valid, it's all part of getting things corrected.

Make a note of what's wrong so you can start your dispute letters.

Credit History

The next section is your credit history. Sometimes, the individual accounts are called trade lines.

Each account will include the name of the creditor and the account number, which may be scrambled for security purposes like XXXX1234. You may have more than one account from a creditor. Many creditors have more than one kind of account, or if you move, they transfer your account to a new location and assign a new number.

Student Loans could be using what looks like a duplicate account number, Credit cards which were lost will show up as a closed account.

The entry will also include:

• Date you opened the account (This is different if it's a collection agency it might show as a newer date)
• The kind of credit (installment, such as a mortgage or car loan, or revolving, such as a department store credit card)
• Whether the account is in your name alone or with another person (Might not be shown)
• High credit limit or highest balance on the card (This is what your original loan amount was or the max credit card limit is.)
• How much you still owe (Balance currently on the account)
• Fixed monthly payments or minimum monthly amount (This is what your paying or did pay in the past a month)
• Status of the account (open, inactive, closed, paid, included in bankruptcy, charged off, transferred etc.)
• How well you've paid the account (this will be a history of any time you've been late will show up here 30,60,90,120, 150 days late etc...)

On Experian's report, your payment history is written in plain English -- never pays late, typically pays 30 days late, etc. Other comments might include settled for less then balance.

Charged off means the creditor has given up, thrown in the towel in trying to get you to pay your debt and they wrote off the amount for tax purposes. It doesn't mean they can't sell your account to a collection agency which they might have done and now you see both a collection agency and a charge off for the original creditor.

If your living in the state of New York guess what if you pay off a charged off account or collection you have 5 years and then that sucker can be removed.. yahoo for anyone in NY. Anyone else boo hoo :(

Other reports use payment codes ranging from 1 to 9; an R1 or I1 on a report is an indication of a good payment history on a revolving or installment account.

Public Records

This section is the part you want to be absolutely blank. The public records section "is never a good story," Expert says. "If you have a public record on there, you've had a problem."

It doesn't list arrests and criminal activities; just financial-related data, such as bankruptcies, judgments and tax liens. Those are the items that will trash your credit faster than anything else if they are not close to coming off your report.

Inquiries

The final section of your report is the inquiries. That's a list of everyone who asked to see your credit report by you requesting new credit cards, loan applications etc..

The less of these the better your scores will be and if you have more then 4 it can really kill off your credit score.

I recommend to keep these at a minimum but don't worry if you've already got a lot of them then you can dispute these too. These are disputed not through the credit bureau but a different process is used to get these suckers removed.