You perhaps know only too well that the information that is contained in your credit report is used by the credit card and loan companies when considering whether to extend credit to you, but are you aware of exactly what is actually in your personal credit report? For instance, did you know that the information which are contained in your credit report could affect whether or not you are able to purchase that new house or will have to stay in your current ‘shoebox’?
A lot ofIn a lot of cases people believe that when a company looks at your credit report they are just looking at your credit score and, although this is without doubt one thing that they do look at, they are also looking at a great deal more. In particular, lenders are looking to see how much debt you have in comparison to your income and even quite small accounts, such as those with a mail order company, will be considered as a deduction from your income when it comes to considering a loan request.
If a credit card company, bank or other lender concludes that you have got less money coming in than you have going out then your loan application will certainly be reject. Actually, by law a specified percentage of your income has got to be available to meet the payments on a loan before the lender is permitted to approve it, regardless of the purpose of the loan.
Lenders will also be looking back at your credit history over the past seven years to see how well you have handled any loans during that period. In particular, they will look to see if you have made your payments on time and will take note of any payments which were more than thirty days late. It may not have appeared especially important to you at the time that you got into difficulty and were late with your payments for several months on an account, however a new lender is certainly going to consider this when assessing the risk of lending to you now.
A lender is also going to see whether any of your accounts have run into debt during the past seven years and whether or not these debts have now been cleared. If there are outstanding payments on a current loan agreement lenders will be very wary about giving you further credit until these are paid off.
Finally, your credit report will also show if you have filed for bankruptcy, in most cases within the last ten years. Some people believe that a lender is more likely to lend to you if you have filed for bankruptcy because they have the added protection of knowing that you are not permitted to file again for several years. This however is not the case and filing for bankruptcy is viewed as a red flag by the finance and credit card companies showing that you have already demonstrated a tendency to get yourself in over your head when managing your finances.
Your personal credit report is an extremely important document and one which you ought not only to understand but which you ought to review from time to time for your own protection and peace of mind. Happily, the law requires that you be provided with a copy of your personal credit report once a year on request and so the first thing you need to acquaint yourself with is how to obtain your free annual credit report. Once you have received your report you then need to study it with care to make sure that it is accurate and then to ask for it to be amended if it is not. Furthermore, there are certain instances in which it is possible to request alterations to your report, even when it is accurate, and here you need to have the answers to hand for questions like how can I remove a judgment from my credit report?