Coming To Grips With Credit Reports And Why They’re Used
Posted by Lynn Daniels | Filed under Finance
Understanding and appreciating credit reports and why they exist becomes necessary anytime one is going to apply for credit (and it’s a mandatory thing for almost everybody these days) and they want to make sure they’ll be successful in the application for it. A credit report can affect much more of a person’s life these days than just whether or not a credit card is issued, for a fact.
To begin with, poor credit can cause you to pay more for everything that you finance and even things that you don’t normally finance but which you are paying for on at least an occasional basis. For example, there are more than several states in the country that allow auto insurers to pull credit to come to a determination of how much to charge for an insurance policy.
Those kinds of companies are doing so because they believe that a person’s credit history can be a good indication of the level of risk they might bring to the game in terms of getting into accidents or receiving traffic tickets and the like. Many experts vehemently dispute this outlook and the states are beginning to come to the conclusion that the practice needs to be outlawed.
What is also good to know is that more and more prospective employers are looking at a prospective employee’s past credit history before coming to a decision about hiring him or her. Keep in mind that a prospective employer must obtain, in writing, permission from the prospective employee to pull credit from one of the three major bureaus (TransUnion, Experian, Equifax) in order to assess it.
What all this means is that credit and the need to have it and also the need to assess just who is a good credit risk and who isn’t is a a fact of life in our society these days. Mailboxes can be stuffed full of credit offers from organizations that have accessed what the credit bureaus call a quick look report and sent out an offer for “possible” credit because of that quick look, for example.
A report on a person’s credit worthiness can be a way to gauge how risky a person might be in terms of what they’ll be able to do in repaying consumer credit, it must be said. Also, they can provide a creditor a 7 to 10 year look at a person’s past credit history. Those with poor credit (below 600, usually) pay higher interest rates for just about everything, including mortgages and car loans.
All of the above highlights why it’s important for a consumer to pull his or her credit reports on an annual basis. By law, each of the reporting bureaus must provide a free credit report to a consumer who asks for it. There won’t be a credit score on the report (that costs money) but the report itself can be a good way to see just what each bureau might have on a consumer, which is a good thing to know.
Understanding and appreciating credit scores and why they exist becomes necessary anytime one is going to apply for credit and they want to make totally sure they’ll be successful in the application for it. Bad credit thus calls for credit repair.
Tags: bad credit, credit repair, credit report, credit score, Finance, money
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