Checking Your Credit Report : The Basics

First off, it’s good to know that when ordering your credit, you are basically dealing with your past credit information on how you’d handled past financial loans and transactions, as compiled by the “big three” credit reporting bureaus. Those big three are Transunion, Equifax and Experian.

These three agencies share information and compile your credit transactions, both good and bad, from a variety of sources who are required to share this information with the various agencies so that other creditors may ask to see the info to decide whether you are a “good risk” for them to loan their money to.

In other words, they are sort of gambling on the odds that you are going to pay the money they loaned you back in a timely fashion so they don’t lose out based on their underwriting calculations.

It’s probably fairly important if you are considering going for a small or large loan, or requesting any sort of a credit loan or equity line of credit, to order your credit report first so you can see if the financial institution is going to offer you a decent APR, or if you’re going to get ripped a new one, so to speak.

Sometimes, it can even give you a little bargaining power, in other words, the ability to say “that’s not good enough for me, I’m going to shop around”. Not only that, but ordering your credit report gives you the opportunity to rectify any blemishes on your record.

For instance, I ordered mine (free, online) a while ago, and found that I had an obscure medical bill sitting out there that I completely forgot about. What happened is they never forwarded the bill when I moved, and the rest is history. I was able to rectify this right away and get the path cleared on my credit report in a short time.