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How to Read Your Credit Report

Most creditors use credit scoring to evaluate your credit record. This involves using your credit application and report to get information about you, such as your annual income, outstanding debt, bill-paying history, and the number and types of accounts you have and how long you have had them. Potential lenders use your credit score to help predict whether you are a good risk to repay a loan and make payments on time.

Anatomy of a credit report

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

Identifying information is just that -- information to identify you. Look at it closely to make sure it's accurate. It's not unusual, for there to be two or three spellings of your name or more than one Social Security number. That's usually because someone reported the information that way. The variations will stay on your credit report; If it's reported wrong, we leave it because it might mess up the link. Don't be to concerned about variations.

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.

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. 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. The entry will also include:

• When you opened the account
• 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
• Total amount of the loan, high credit limit or highest balance on the card
• How much you still owe
• Fixed monthly payments or minimum monthly amount
• Status of the account (open, inactive, closed, paid, etc.)
• How well you've paid the account

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 internal collection and charged off or default.

Charged off means the creditor has given up, thrown in the towel, they made efforts to collect and written it off.

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.