Contents Of Your Credit Report

Your credit report is the most important financial document of your life, which is why financial experts advise consumers to review it periodically. It contains details of all your financial transactions and has an impact upon your loans, employment, the apartment you apply for and many other things. So when you receive your credit report, check it in detail, going over all the sections with a fine toothcomb.

To know how to read your credit report, you must first know what your report contains.

Personal Information
The first part of the report has all your personal details like your name, date of birth, social security number, you employment details, current and past residential addresses, details of lawsuits, arrests and judgments etc. Go through this section and check how your name has been spelled. Also check if your addresses have been listed correctly.

Financial details
All the financial transactions made by you during the last year appear in this section. If you have kept a record of all the transactions, you can compare them with the entries in the report and check them for accuracy. If there are details of expenses that you have not incurred, then get in touch with the original credit company and also the credit bureau. It may be a sign of identity theft. If you had paid off any outstanding balances and they have not be corrected in the report, then you must get them corrected as they have an impact on your credit score.

Initiate a dispute with the credit bureau and if possible, try to provide documentary proof so that the dispute is resolved as soon as possible. If you find that you are a victim of identity theft, then place a fraud alert on the report and also lodge a police complaint. You can also lodge a complaint with the FTC on their website.

Inquiries
Your credit report is pulled out for credit checks by lenders when you apply for loans. These appear in the form of hard inquiries. They affect lower your credit score. Soft inquiries are those, which appear when you check your credit report or a company does it for its promotion. They do not affect the credit score.

Collections
These appear when unpaid debts are turned over to collection agencies. They may sometimes occur as a result of error on the part of the credit bureau or the originating company. Collection accounts remain on the report for a period of seven years. Therefore, if you spot an error in the collections section, dispute it. If you are repaying a debt appearing in the collection section, then negotiate with the collection agency or the original creditor to get the item removed from the credit report.

Disputing errors is essential to keep your report clean, as you never know what negative item the lender may object to even if it is minute. But do so carefully and only those that are genuine. Too many disputes can get them rejected by the credit bureau as frivolous.