See What’s Been Reported
At first glance, the information on a credit report can be very difficult to read. Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax are the three major credit reporting agencies, and the credit reports created on you by these companies are basically laid out the same way.
Table of Contents
There are basically 11 different sections to a credit report with only a few minor differences between each one.
The reason you want to review all three is that each individual company may gather different information and certain lenders may only report to one or more of the bureaus. This may cause you to have a higher score on one report than the other two.
I’ve listed them individually describing each individual section. They may appear in different places on your report however I’ve listed them in the order where they are most likely to appear.
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The heading of a credit report is normally found at the very top and right of the report. It will contain the Credit Bureau’s information, the Companies name, address, phone number, and the date the credit report was pulled.
This section of the credit report is your personal information. It includes your name, social security number, date of birth, and phone number (if available), and up to three different addresses.
Your most recent address appears directly below your name with your previous addresses appearing below your name in chronological order. Your employment and birth date information will appear to the right of your addresses and above the summary score. This information is only available if it was inputted when you applied for credit.
This section of the credit report will contain your employment history and information. This may include the company name, occupation, income, hire date, and release date if available.
This information along with personal information gets reported on your credit report by an individual inputting the information when you apply for credit.
This section of your credit report will show if there are any civil actions with dollar amounts awarded, they normally appear towards the top of your credit report below the score summary in an area named Public Records. This information consists of liens, civil actions against you, foreclosures, and bankruptcies.
The public records section also includes the account’s name and number, filing date with court, status date, if the status is released, vacated, satisfied, dismissed or discharged, type and amount of public record, docket or certificate number, and code describing your association to the public record item per the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The plaintiff’s name, asset amounts, and liability for bankruptcies and voluntary indicator for bankruptcies also.
Descriptions for the above chart:
There are many names for the number score on your credit bureau, FICO, Beacon, Beacon Score, Bureau Score, or Empirica to name a few. It is normally located above your trade and credit information and is the overall rating of your credit history. There are up to 4 factors disclosed and are displayed based on their impact on the final score.
This section of your credit report will identify your accounts that have been sent to professional debt collecting firms. Collection information will include the name of the collection agency providing the information, the collector’s kind of business designators, and the collector’s account number for your account.
This information will also include the date the original creditor charged off the amount, the date the amount was verified, the original dollar amount of the collection, balance owed as of the date closed or verified, explanation of current account status reported by the collection agency and the name of the original creditor.
Descriptions for the above chart:
This section of your credit report will show if there are any civil actions with dollar amounts awarded, they normally appear towards the top of your credit report below the score summary in an area named Public Records. This information consists of liens, civil actions against you, foreclosures, and bankruptcies.
The public records section also includes the account’s name and number, filing date with court, status date, if the status is released, vacated, satisfied, dismissed or discharged, type and amount of public record, docket or certificate number, and code describing your association to the public record item per the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The plaintiff’s name, asset amounts, and liability for bankruptcies, and voluntary indicator for bankruptcies also.
Descriptions for the above chart:
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The trades section of your credit report is where creditors report credit cards and loan amounts with their payment histories. The creditor’s name is in the left column, the credit amount is in the center, and the payment history is in the right column. This section provides a breakdown by month your payment history.
Descriptions for the trade line section of a credit bureau:
On the far right-hand side of your credit report, you will normally find your payment history for the past 24 months. Codes reflect the monthly status of your accounts and are displayed for balance reporting loans.
Charge-offs and collections are not graded. Some codes have different meanings on different credit reports. I have listed all the different meanings of each code. Here are the definitions of the codes.
In addition to the above codes, next to each account on your report, there will be a letter designating your relationship to that account. This is what those letters mean.
Using the above coding you can go to the column on your personal credit report and the following alphanumeric combinations would be good indications that you have outstanding credit history: 1, R1, I1, or O1. You would not want to find or see any of these 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9’s.
Did you know?
Don’t let the car dealer know more about your credit history and score than you do. This puts you at a serious disadvantage and could end up costing you thousands of dollars.
Errors are commonly found on credit reports. They can be easily fixed but you need to find them and correct them before you’re sitting in a car dealership wanting to buy your dream car. Not fixing these errors beforehand will cost you money over the life of your next new or used car loan.
A credit report is like a report card for your financial well being. It will list creditors you owe money to and your history on how you pay them back.
What you can find on your credit report?
This part of your credit report is a list of the companies that have inquired about your credit history, usually to extend new or additional credit to you. Numerous inquiries will lower your score by about 2 points per inquiry.
Description for the above chart:
The warnings and messages section of your credit report is usually the last section on the report. This section lists any messages that have to do about your credit, name, address, or social security number. There may even be a persona message to call a number to verify that the person using your credit history is the actual person it belongs to.
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