FICO Credit Score Reports 101
FICO credit score reports are not that hard to crack. All you need is just some minor information regarding the different parts of a typical FICO credit score report. You do not need a college diploma to interpret what it means, but you will have to learn a bit of the language so that you will see what your potential loan providers in the future are seeing when they request for your credit report to assess your capability of paying up and keeping up a good financial transaction with them. FICO credit score reports are quite easy to interpret. All it takes is some time to understand what they contain and why they are made that way.
Importance of Your FICO Credit Score Reports
Identity theft is not an impossible occurrence for the least careful consumers. The financial identity of a person can actually be stolen. Now if you have access to FICO credit score reports, you will find everything accounted for and you will not be prone to being a longtime victim of any financial fraud. Should you find any discrepancy in your FICO credit score reports, it will really be something that you can easily nail down.
Your Identifying Information
This contains all the basic information about you and is present in all FICO credit score reports. While this is so minor, you have to check with this in order for you to find if all the given information is correct. Never ignore even a slight misspelling in the details, because this is what will reflect all the time when people who select you for credit offers try to obtain a copy of FICO credit score reports for their evaluation.
Trade Lines
FICO credit score reports contain trade lines, or those that involves all the transactions you made that got recorded to the three major credit bureaus. This will really summarize your financial activities and paint a picture of your financial personality. If you are well able to guard yourself and keep your record from being stained with bad payments, you got nothing to worry about. This is one crucial part that you have to watch for closely. This is also the part your creditors are quite focused on. FICO credit score reports are requested to secure this information.
Inquiries
When you have FICO credit score reports, you authorize other companies to access them when you are doing business with them. Inquiries can be hard or soft. The hard ones are those which are authorized to view your FICO credit score reports with written consent. They are legally acquiring your FICO credit score reports. On the other hand, the soft inquiries are for companies which have you pre-selected for offers such as credit card accounts. You have to realize that the inquiries field reflects all the people who had access to your FICO credit score reports within the last two years. This is really part of your financial history as much as your transactions.
Collections and Public Records
FICO credit score reports are also famous for reflecting records from counties and collection agencies. If this field is quite meaty, there is reason for you to feel bad and expect a bad FICO credit score. This is where delinquent payers often get a full stack of written information, and it is something that creditors avoid like the plague. You need to know that FICO credit score reports are very objective documents and it will not try to cover up for you so must be able to track them, take care of your financial reputation and deal with things accordingly. A typical request for a report costs around $8-10 but it already spells the difference between you being oriented with your credit status and being a victim of identity theft and not knowing it until all your resources have been siphoned off.