Do You Know What's In Your Personal Credit Report?

Knowing what goes into your personal credit report is an important step in understanding credit and improving your credit score.

Your personal credit report is divided into four distinct areas:

  • Personal Information
  • Credit History
  • Public Records
  • Credit Inquiries

Let's look at each one in detail.

Monitor all three of your credit reports...

...for just pennies a day.

Stay on top of your credit, by monitoring all three credit bureau reports, every time you plan on getting a loan, if you see suspicious charges, or just to be sure.

You can get daily alerts for all three reports, and react quickly to any changes in your information.

Get the 3 in 1 monitoring service now

Your Personal Information

This information includes your full name, birth date, addresses, Social Security number, telephone number, and spouse's name.

Occasionally, a credit report will show an incorrect name or number listed; this is a result of human error. Credit bureaus are not inclined to correct these mistakes, unless you bring it to their attention.

Your personal credit report does not include your ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, marital status, or receipt of public assistance. Federal law prohibits credit bureaus from publishing any of this information on your personal credit report.

For more information, check out the ECOA, or Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

Your Credit History

This is the most important section in your personal credit report. It contains a list of all your accounts of credit, each creditor's name, the dates of the account, and your account number (though this number appears scrambled or incomplete to protect your privacy).


Some times, the same account can be listed as several different accounts in your report. Don't panic! This is standard procedure if you change your address, phone number, or other personal information. In these situations, creditors frequently start you with a new account number to correspond with your new information.


The "Credit History" section also contains information on how reliably you have paid your bills. Credit bureaus typically only list accounts as late when you exceed the 30 days to make a payment. Past the 30 day limit, your credit score is reduced for every additional 30 days late you are on that particular payment. Your account balances, credit card limits, loan amounts, and monthly payment amounts for each account are also be included in this section.

Finally, your credit history includes the status of each account (e.g. paid, charged-off, outstanding, etc.), and whether the account was ever in default or forwarded to a collection agency.

These last two factors can be particularly damaging to you, as usually they are only erased from your personal credit report after seven years have passed, even after you pay the delinquent account in full.

Sidebar
Do you have any derogatory information in you credit file? If so, do you know how long it's been there, who it's from, and when it's due to expire? You can find out all this and more by checking your 3-bureau credit report right now.

Public Records

Problems in this section can be more serious and damaging to your personal credit report than everything else put together. Here, potential creditors can find lists of any financial legal actions taken against you or, as in the case of bankruptcies, by you.

Note that arrests, tickets and convictions that are not of a financial nature are NOT listed in this, or any other section, of your credit file:

    • Bankruptcies
    • Judgments
    • Lawsuits
    • Liens
    • Repossessions
    • Wage garnishments

Having a record of any of these on your credit report can be very damaging as they, too, remain in the report for seven years. Creditors generally consider these to be far more severe than making a payment even 60 days late. However, lenders place the most weight on recent behavior, so paying bills on time now will go a long way to help correct these past mistakes.

Credit Inquiries

This section of your report contains a record of every time a copy of your personal credit report was requested, when it was requested, and by whom.

Credit inquiries are be separated into two categories:

    • "Soft" inquiries include credit report requests made by you, an employer, a landlord or a pre-approved credit card offer.

    • "Hard" inquiries are generated by entities like banks when you actively seek additional credit like applying for a loan, a mortgage or a credit card.


Creditors ignore "soft" inquiries and, therefore, they have no effect on your chances of opening a new line of credit. "Hard" inquiries are different. A lender may interpret a lot of "hard" inquiries on your report to mean that you are taking on a lot of new debt and may have trouble paying all your accounts on time. This is not necessarily the case, and potential creditors know it, but, they usually err on the side of caution.

Please note: for certain types of loans, car loans for instance, credit agencies count multiple inquiries within a certain time period of their choosing (usually 2-4 weeks) as one inquiry when calculating a credit score. This allows you to shop around with different lending agencies for the best interest rate. (credit scores are discussed in detail a little later).


Next: Troubleshooting your credit, what you can do when you find errors in your personal credit report.