Finding Out Your Score The Easy Way
If you have determined to get your credit score and find out what your financial reputation is, you are in luck, it is quite easy. A number of consumer protection laws and regulation of the reporting industry have made it easy and cheap to keep a close eye on your scores and keep you updated on which credit accounts are in default or require payoff.
Let's get right to it.
To begin, the Federal Trade Commission has created an online resource: www.annualcreditreport.com
which provides your mandated free reporting of credit scores by the three bureau annually for a small handling charge. Once a year the bureaus are mandated to provide you with a full credit score reporting for free, and if required, you can obtain additional reports throughout the year for a small charge per agency required.
If you prefer to get your credit score directly from the reporting agencies, you can do that too. As stated above, the reporting bureaus are mandated to provide you a free report of your score each year and you can write them direct or use their online resources to get your free credit score the easy way.
- Experian: PO Box 2002, Allen TX 75013, www.experian.com
- Equifax: PO Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374; www.equifax.com
- TransUnion: PO Box 2000, Chester, PA 19022; www.transunion.com
The three reporting bureaus listed above are the big three of the credit score reporting industry, there do exist other more specialized companies that compile financial history data that can be used, but in most cases you will only need the scores provided by the 3 bureaus above in order to get a good average of your credit score.
In addition to your annually provided free credit score, the reporting agencies are now required to provide a brief credit score report if you are declined for an account due to your scores or information contained within your report. Common big ticket items that can cause you difficulty in getting approved for credit cards or other financing include recent bankruptcies, foreclosures, history of late payments or defaults.
Alternative financial history score providers include the following if you require more specialized attention.
ChexSystems
(Provides checking history to banks, also mandated by the FCRA to provide a free score report annually)
Attention: Customer Relations
12005 Ford Road, Suite 600
Dallas TX 75234
Phone: 800-428-9623
www.chexhelp.com
ChoicePoint's Consumer Disclosure
(ChoicePoint is a private company that provides the CLUE© Report used by the Federal Reserve and other companies)
Also Required to provide a free annual credit score report.
P.O. Box 105108
Atlanta, GA 30348-5108
www.choicetrust.com
CourthouseDirect.com (Provides Information Pertaining To Past Judicial Judgements)
P. O. Box 70558
Houston, Texas 77270
Phone: (713) 683-0314 or (713) 683-0491
Fax: (713) 683-0493
National Consumer Telecom & Utilities Exchange (NCTUE)
www.nctue.com
Tenant History Credit Bureaus
www.saferent.com Phone:
(888) 333-2413
What To Do Once You Get Your Score
After you have compiled the credit score assessments that might be affecting your account, examine your reports for negative items that are bringing down your scores. Your credit score is determined by an algorithm taking into consideration factors such as late payments, amount of open accounts you have, credit lines in default, the balances you hold on open accounts, how much money you have available to you through credit even if it is not currently borrowed, as well as defaults, missed bills, history of on time payments, bankruptcies, foreclosures, and repossessions.
Make a list of all the items bringing down your credit score and we recommend you rank them based on the severity of their impact on your scores. Rank the most serious items based on common sense on the top and score the less severe items lower in the list. It is typical to find a number of inaccuracies on your reports, so do not be surprised. There is a process to clean and correct incorrect items from your reports to improve your scores, using disputes, but for now it is enough know exactly what is impacting your credit scores and how.
Once you have done so, it is just a matter of developing a plan and tackling each of the negatively impacting items one at a time and taking care of them to improve your scores. Use the scores you got to build a road map towards improvement. Dispute items on your report that are in error, and payoff or take care of accounts that are in default that you might have forgotten about. With time and effort your credit scores will improve.
