Credit Report Review
Your credit report provides a highlight of your financial situation. Before you look at different forms of debt settlement Richmond Hill, take time to review your credit report. If you don’t have a good credit history, accessing credit products at an affordable rate can be a challenge. Everyone has a score which is a three-digit number that tells the kind of risk you pose when given credit. Lenders, employers and even landlords use this score to determine if you are financially responsible. When planning your financial future, it’s worth looking at your report and setting a few priorities. Let’s start with the basics and show you how to achieve a high financial reliability ranking.
What’s a credit report anyway?
Before a lender can approve any form of financing, they’ll want to know if you’ve taken credit before, how you’ve used it, whether you paid for it on time and the balances that are currently pending. Lenders get all this information in your credit report. This report is used to track your payment activity after accessing several credit products. This includes credit cards, car payments and student loans. In Canada, there are two credit bureaus that provide this report: Equifax and TransUnion.
Your credit report can be pulled if you apply for credit, a job or even consider taking insurance. When your credit history is impressive, it’s an indication that you are financially responsible. For this reason, lenders will offer lower interest rates. If you have not taken credit then this could also be a problem when you want to apply. This is because there’s no credit history that can show potential lenders if you can be relied upon to make payments or not.
The contents of a credit report
A credit report will contain different pieces of information. All this information simply tells if you are good at managing money that is given to you on credit. This includes:
- Your current bank accounts
- Credit cards, lines of credit or loans that you’ve taken
- Debts that were referred to collection
- Bankruptcy filing
- Credit inquiries made by lenders, landlords and employers
What’s the best score?
You should aim at having a credit score that is 660 and above. The score can be as low as 300 and as high as 900 depending on the reporting agency. If you notice that your credit score is lower than average, don’t worry there are so many ways to improve it. Look for forms of debt relief Richmond Hill that won’t damage your credit score.
How to rebuild your credit score
One step to improve your score is to reduce the balances on high interest rates cards and loans. In fact, if you can keep the balances lower than 25% of your credit limit, you can significantly improve your score. The other alternative is to make more than the minimum payment every month. If you can afford to pay slightly more, it will have a positive impact on your score just make sure you don’t miss out on any payments. Remember that your score is updated every 30 to 60 days so if you continue to make on-time payments, you will certainly see some progress.