Quickly learn how to read credit score information. It’s much easier than you might think.

Reading your credit score information can be done quite easily if you have a good resource guide or someone with a financial background to help you.

Your credit report consists of a complete listing of your payment history covering the last seven years. It also details your debt load at the time of preparing the report.

Other information related to foreclosures, bankruptcy and judgments, which are matters of public record, also form part of the report. These are all factors, which are eventually combined with your debt and income information to lead to a FICO score.

FICO is the most popular credit score, as lenders speak to it often in their marketing efforts and thus use it to determine the creditworthiness of the applicant.

While most consumers are aware that they have a FICO score, most have never learned how to read credit score information.

There are 3 credit reporting agencies in the US, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Reports from the all the credit reporting agencies may not be the same as it is a voluntary system and would depend on the methods for collecting and analyzing data used by each agency. So you can be sure of getting a true and balanced picture only if you know how to read credit score information, as it is reflected on the various credit reports from all three agencies.

Knowing how to read credit score reports accurately will vary from one agency to the next. If you obtain your credit report from a source outside the three large agencies, it may contain jargon that you may find useless because it is prepared for their own internal purposes.

A report coming directly from a large credit reporting agency will be more comprehensive and easier to interpret, as it is targeted specifically at the consumer. So let’s learn how to read credit report information!

A credit report is basically divided into four parts or sections. These sections contain information related to your identification, your credit/payment history, public records and details of inquiries.

Identification - This information provides details of your identity and it is necessary to make sure that it is absolutely correct. Common mistakes can be two or three different spellings of your name, incorrect or more than one social security number. Your current and previous address, your employer & spouse's name, your date of birth, driver's license number and phone number(s) etc are reflected.

Credit history - This section will contain details of all your accounts with various creditors. Many reports would mention individual accounts as 'trades'. The details contained would mention the name of the creditor and the account number for a specific account. You can have many accounts with a single creditor. The names and other details may be scrambled to maintain security.

Entries in this section for each account would list: account opening date, whether account is single or joint, nature of the credit i.e. car loan, revolving loan etc., total amount of the loan, present outstanding loan amount, highest balance ever on the card, monthly installment amount/minimum monthly payment, whether the account is paid up, closed, open or inactive etc. and most importantly, how has been your payment record on the account.

Public Records - This section should preferably be blank as it relates to you being sued, or tax liens or judgments being filed against you. Any entry would be an indication of something that will negatively impact your credit score.

Inquiries - This section would contain a list of all the people who have wanted to see your credit report.

Each of the above categories provides personal information that you should be tuned into. Information like this can be highly insightful to the average consumer and therefore, you should learn how to read credit score information.

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» Using Credit Score - Look Who's Looking!
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