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Saturday, December 27, 2008

Apply To See Your Credit Report And Change Your Credit Score

By Jim Bransby

Your credit score has become the way in which many decisions about you will be made. Applying for credit cards, or for a car loan, will trigger a credit check and generate multiple credit scores, based upon which lender will make decisions about whether and how much to lend, and at what rate. Credit scoring is also used by potential employers, utility and service providers, and many others.

That said, improving your credit score is of vital importance. The major credit reporting bureaus use different methods to assemble credit scores, but these methods are similar enough that the same steps will be effective to improve all of your credit scores.

First, a consumer must know the players in the field of credit. There are three major credit reporting bureaus that each have a file pertaining to you. These files are constructed over time by compiling the information that credit providers give the bureaus. Therefore, each time you obtain credit, the report of it goes into your file and is updated over time with a record of your repayment of the debt.

For example, say you get a car loan that requires a payment every month on the 5th for thirty six months. Over the first year, say you make two payments on the 20th, and the rest on or before the 5th. The lender sends a report about this loan activity to each credit reporting bureau. Each credit bureau then uses a proprietary formula to compute a credit score for you, based on the information reported in your file.

As the scores can differ somewhat, the next step is applying to check your credit report. The information here is vital, it can be though of as your financial health record. There are many offers on the internet that can be used to check both your credit report and your credit score.

Once you have a credit report and a credit score, take a look at the information reported by your creditors. Make sure that the creditors that are reporting into your credit file are actually your accounts. If there are creditors listed on your report that you did not borrow from, you can improve your credit score by having these entries removed from your account.

Finally, review all payment histories to be sure that they are accurate. If a creditor has reported incorrect late payments, or does not show payments that you make, correcting these can greatly improve your credit score. Your credit score report will contain the addresses of the credit reporting bureaus. Just follow the instructions to write to the bureaus and identify errors in your report

The credit bureaus will individually investigate each error. Since it can often take several letters back and forth, keep a file of your letters and their responses. You can dramatically improve your credit score in a short time by removing inaccurate information and records of late payments.

Apply to check your credit report as soon as possible, and then at least annually. The more you know about your financial health record, the better able you will be to improve your credit score. Credit scoring is so commonly used today that improving your credit score will help you in many ways.

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