I Don’t Understand My Credit Report!

Your credit report contains vital information about your creditworthiness and is one of the largest considerations made by a lender considering you as a prospect. Understanding your credit report is very important. However, if you find yourself wondering, “How do I understand my credit report?” you’ll need a few pieces of vital information. How do you make sense of your report? What do the different codes mean on your report? Below, you’ll find a bit of information to help you understand what your credit report says about you as a consumer.

If you find yourself wondering, “How do I make sense of my credit report?” the prospect can be very daunting. However, it’s not actually all that difficult. The first section on your credit report is nothing more than your personal information. This will contain your Social Security number, your current address, your date of birth and other vital information. Below this, it gets a bit more confusing.

The next section down is your borrowing summary. This summarizes all the information found in the rest of the report, including your late payments for the past 2 years, your credit history, your total amount of credit and the amount of credit you actually have available right now.

Don’t throw up your hands, crying “My credit report is too confusing,” The section below this is nothing more than what your public records say about you. This area will include any tax liens placed on you, any bankruptcies you have filed within the past 10 years and any legal judgments rendered against you, in favor of a creditor. This is one of the most important areas for you to understand, in order to ensure that this information is accurate and complete.

One section that may make you say, “My credit report is too confusing,” is the section detailing mortgages. This will take the form of a chart, showing the bank, the type of loan (a mortgage), the limit of the loan, the amount you still owe on the loan, when the loan was issued, the length of the loan and more. Included here will be the terms of the loan, including the amount of monthly payments, the last date of activity and even the last date of delinquency if you have been late your house payments in the past. This section may appear very confusing, but if you take a bit of time, it will make sense very quickly.