Managing your FICO® credit rating can help you become a smarter borrower. Failing to understand how your FICO® scores are calculated can be costly. Although it’s not the only thing lenders look at, the scores calculated by the nation’s three major credit-rating bureau…

Your credit record contains information about your income, debts, and credit payment history. Your credit payment history is recorded in a file or report. These files or reports are maintained and sold by consumer reporting agencies (CRAs).
One type of CRA is commonly known as a credit burea…

Checking your credit report often allows you to keep track of your financial progress, as well as catch any mistakes or fraudulent accounts. 1. To detect identity fraud early We all know we should check our credit card statements every month for charges that we haven’t made. But that only catches the thief who uses an account you know you…

There is a wealth of information listed on your credit report. Here’s how to look at key sections and make sense of it all. You’ve pulled a copy of your credit report and are now looking at a tangle of information. You see your last three addresses, a long list of businesses that have checked your report and dozens of cre…

Reading a credit report is easy, once you know how. If you thought grades ended when you graduated from school, think again. As an adult, you still get graded on your use of credit, but instead of receiving an actual grade, you receive a credit score….

Certain credit report inquiries or credit pulls do adversely affect your credit score On a credit report, one of the five categories that affect your score is “Inquiries.” These are requests made by third parties to examine your credit history. A variety of parties have the legal abil…

A soft credit inquiry or pull does not hurt your credit score, but a hard credit pull does. On a credit report, when a third party looks at your credit score, this is called an inquiry. All inquiries, however, are not created equal. Some hurt your credit score, and some do not. An inquiry k…