Credit Report - 101 Essentials

By: John Mcfadden

A Credit Report is essential for ever adult. It allows you information one your own financial position to allow lenders to give you credit. If you are about to apply for a loan then it's strongly recommended that you access your report up to six months before taking out the loan. This is advised because you will have time to correct any wrong information and pursue ways to lift your credit score on your credit report.

Getting a loan is essential in this day and age so if you want to head on the path of financial freedom (don't we all) then it's important you know what a Report is all about and how you can best make use of the information, this seems fairly logical so you'll be surprised to find out that over 75% of Americans don't know their Credit Score! and 20% have never even seen their Credit Score! So if you are reading this article then you are probably ahead of most people and therefore will get to the financial freedom path faster then most.

There are three main Report Bureaus that you can access your credit report from. It's important that you don't ask for your credit score as if you want get a free copy of your report.

The three Report Bureaus are: Experian (formally TRW), then Equifax, and TransUnion.

It's very important to understand what your credit report is exactly made up of. Here is a list of the following ingredients:

Payment History 35%
Amount Owed 30%
Length of Credit History 15%
New Credit 10%
Types of Credit Used 10%

It's important you know the ways to improve your credit score, so follow the following tip to get your score as good as it can be so creditors will only be too happy to loan your the money for your new house, with them being very confident you can make the repayments back. It most likely will provide you with a better interest rate and your terms and loan conditions will also be improved.

Credit Score Improvement Tips.

Refrain from getting loan consolidations.
This will effectively kill off you past history on all the loans you've had, seeing that your credit report and score's biggest factor and most important figure is your past payment history, then you need to maintain loans and finish them off with the financial institution you took them out with.

Keep Old Accounts
This is similar to the above point but with a difference. It's important I point out to you that having several accounts or lets say credit card accounts for example. The total available credit when compared to what you ow on the cards is a ration that the credit report will factor in to work out your Credit Score. The less that ration is - of if it surpassed a factor of 1 then you are bankrupt. So if you move over our debts on credit cards to one which has a lower interest rate it may be good for you in the short term but not in the long - as your available credit to debt become higher and there for a negative.

Resist the temptation for getting in store credit cards
Having many in store cards will show that your not the best saver and that your credit worthiness is not excellent. It could be a hit of as much as 20 points on your credit report rating. It also lowers your age of credit for each card.

I hope this information on getting your credit report has helped and you see the importance of your credit report and credit score.

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