"Generally speaking, it is never a good idea to share personal identifiable information like your credit score and other financial information via social media," says Equifax spokeswoman Demitra Wilson.
The person or company lending you money for a home, car or credit card splurge, knows your score and uses it to justify the interest rate you are charged for that loan. Knowing your score helps you guess at how they arrived at that interest rate.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) has a strict limit on who can check your credit and under what circumstance. The law regulates credit reporting and ensures that only business entities with a specific, legitimate purpose, and not members of the general public, can check your credit without written permission.
Without a good credit score and history, the experts say, it's more difficult to qualify for a mortgage or car loan – and more expensive, too, because you won't get the best interest rates. In many states, bad credit can even raise your insurance premiums, cost you a rental apartment, or make it harder to get hired.
Checking your credit score on your own, which is a soft credit check or inquiry, doesn't hurt your credit score. But when a creditor or lender runs a credit check, that's often a hard credit check, which could affect your credit score.
Online: Visit AnnualCreditReport.com. By Phone: Call 1-877-322-8228. For TTY service, call 711 and ask the relay operator for 1-800-821-7232.
There's a missed payment lurking on your report
A single payment that is 30 days late or more can send your score plummeting because on-time payments are the biggest factor in your credit score. Worse, late payments stay on your credit report for up to seven years.
The following common actions can hurt your credit score: Missing payments. Payment history is one of the most important aspects of your FICO® Score, and even one 30-day late payment or missed payment can have a negative impact. Using too much available credit.
Generally speaking, the people that tend to obsess over their credit score are doing so because it's something concrete they can measure. It's just like getting on the scale each Monday morning to assess the weekend's damage.
How Often Can You Check Your Credit Score? You can check your credit score as often as you want without hurting your credit, and it's a good idea to do so regularly. At the very minimum, it's a good idea to check before applying for credit, whether it's a home loan, auto loan, credit card or something else.
A: No, you can't check your spouse's (or ex's) personal credit reports. In order to request a consumer report on someone else, you must have what's called a “permissible purpose” under federal law, and marriage or divorce is not one of them.
In the context of your credit report, historically, only three types of entries were public records: tax liens, civil judgments and bankruptcies. Now, only bankruptcies should show up as a public record on an individual's credit report.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows the lender or broker to share the report they receive with their customer. However, if you choose to do so, you must be prepared to explain the report, and the information in it, to your customer.
While TransUnion offers the Facebook share button, other credit bureaus, including Experian and Equifax, do not. "Generally speaking, it is never a good idea to share personal identifiable information like your credit score and other financial information via social media," says Equifax spokeswoman Demitra Wilson.
A FICO® Score of 730 falls within a span of scores, from 670 to 739, that are categorized as Good. The average U.S. FICO® Score, 711, falls within the Good range.
Consequently, when lenders check your FICO credit score, whether based on credit report data from Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion, they will likely use the FICO 8 scoring model. FICO 8 scores range between 300 and 850. A FICO score of at least 700 is considered a good score.
It's something you should definitely discuss.” If you have a decent score — above 750, in most cases, according to Griffin — there's not much use in stressing out over improving it: You'll likely qualify for the best offers. The difference between 700 and 750 is much more significant than between 750 and 800.
If you have a good credit score, you'll almost always qualify for the best interest rates, and you'll pay lower finance charges on credit card balances and loans. The less you pay in interest, the sooner you'll pay off the debt, and the more money you'll have for other expenses.
You can have a thin credit file for a number of reasons, including: You have forgone credit use for any reason and paid cash for most things for sometime. You share or shared your finances with a spouse and most of the credit is or was in your spouse's name. You're young and are just establishing your credit as an ...
One way to do this is by checking what's called the five C's of credit: character, capacity, capital, collateral and conditions. Understanding these criteria may help you boost your creditworthiness and qualify for credit.
Your credit score may be low — even if you don't have debt — if you: Frequently open or close accounts and lines of credit. Generate lots of hard inquiries on your credit (which is easy to do, if you're not careful when you shop around for a loan and want to see what lender will give you the best interest rate)
Not using your credit card doesn't hurt your score. However, your issuer may eventually close the account due to inactivity, and that could affect your score by lowering your overall available credit.
There's no guarantee that paying off debt will help your scores, and doing so can actually cause scores to dip temporarily at first. In general, however, you could see an improvement in your credit as soon as one or two months after you pay off the debt.
You may have heard carrying a balance is beneficial to your credit score, so wouldn't it be better to pay off your debt slowly? The answer in almost all cases is no. Paying off credit card debt as quickly as possible will save you money in interest but also help keep your credit in good shape.
Every month you pay your card's bill on time will bump your credit score up, so set a routine and you can grow your creditworthiness quickly—as long as you can avoid missing a credit card payment.