The four credit report groups.
Just like there are four food groups a credit report has four groups.
This is your personal data that gives you your identity. Your social security number is part of this group as well as your current and previous addresses, your date of birth, telephone numbers, driver’s license numbers, your employer and your spouse’s name.
Look at it closely to make sure it’s accurate. It is not unusual to have different spellings of your name because someone reported the information that way.
This is a name out of each account that you have. It 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 or revolving)
* 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, charged off, etc.)
* Payment history for the account
When the account has charged off this means the creditor has given up on collection of this account.
In this group you will find all financial related data such as bankruptcies, judgements and tax liens. This is the part you would want to be absolutely blank. If there is a public record, understand that these records will damage your credit faster than anything else.
Arrests and criminal activities are not included on a credit report.
Any time someone gets into the report an inquiry will be posted. If you call the credit bureau and ask for a copy, it will be listed here.
Inquiries are divided into two sections, hard and soft. Hard inquiries are ones you initiate by filling out a credit application, loan for a new car or even a home loan. Soft inquiries are from companies seeking information for their pre-qualified promotional mailer or current creditors who are monitoring your account.
You may have heard that a large number of inquiries can have a negative impact on your credit score, but rest easy as the vast majority of inquiries are ignored by the FICO scoring models. For example inquiries within 30 days of getting a mortgage or a car loan would be ignored. The scoring also counts two or more hard inquiries in the same 14-day period as just one inquiry. In other words, you could have 30 in two weeks and it would only count as one.
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