Credit Score Guide

Do you know your credit score is?

Do you even know WHAT a credit score is?

Don’t feel bad.

Most people don’t.

There are many ways to raise your credit score and sadly many consumers are in a position where they need to raise their credit score due to failing to pay their current bills in a timely fashion. There are many programs currently being touted online and even on television that promise to help get you out of debt and raise your credit score. Although there are some companies and debt relief agencies that can help a consumer get out of debt and raise their credit score there are even more that do nothing except put that same consumer even more in debt thereby increasing their financially related stress. However, the truth is a consumer can avoid these entire fly by night debt relief companies and raise their credit score on their own with legitimate techniques that are easy and quick to implement.

You should review a copy of your credit report, annually. Although credit-reporting agencies make every effort of ensure the information included in your credit report is accurate, mistakes do occur and will affect your credit rating. If you check your credit report annually, you will be able to have the wrong information corrected before it becomes a problem.

Mortgage lenders generally check with three credit bureaus in order to evaluate your past payment history. Your goal in cleaning up your credit report should be to clean up each of the three bureaus. If you only work on one, this does not effect the reporting to the other bureaus.

If you have ever gone shopping for a new car or made an attempt to purchase a new home then you are probably familiar with your credit score. Even if you haven’t made any type of purchase that required you to obtain a loan or credit due to the amount of money involved you’ve probably still seen or heard the words credit score mentioned on the television or in a business or financial article. The reason for this is because our financial well being in today’s complicated credit/loan society revolves around that very powerful three digit number known as our credit score.

Your credit score is an integral part of your financial life. It is important that you understand what it’s all about. Lenders, landlords, insurers, utility companies and even employers look at your credit score. It is derived from what’s in your credit reports, and it ranges between 300 and 850.

Yet, according to a survey that was recently conducted, nearly half of all Americans don’t know how these scores are derived or even what factors are used to come up with them.

Did you know that your credit score can vary depending on who pulls your score and why? Imagine this…. You need a new car and are thinking of buying a home too. You do your homework and pull your score online directly from the credit bureaus. Your score online is 650. The car dealer tells you your score is 619 and your mortgage officer says your score is 694. Why the different scores? What causes such discrepancies?

Credit score is a number that is based on financial trustiness of a person. Credit score can be easily determined by credit report that contains all history of your bills (payable/paid), credit info or anything else that would affect your financial creditworthiness. All lenders like banks and credit card companies use credit scores to know the financial ability of consumers.

By now, most consumers with even a minimal history of credit are aware that something known as a credit score has a tremendous amount of influence on his or her financial lives. The score, a distillation of one’s credit history reduced to a three-digit number between 350 and 850, represents to the world the overall credit worthiness of the individual that it represents.

570. I was shocked and disturbed seeing the number that I long neglected checking. Must be some sort of mistake. No, that is what happens when you make a credit card payment SIXTY days late. So much for being approved for that new Honda Accord.