Building Up Your Personal Credit Rating

Your personal credit rating is the only impression many credit lenders get of you prior to giving you a line of credit. If you fail to ensure your credit rating is high enough, chances are good you will undermine yourself in terms of getting the loans you want, getting insurance for your home and car and even stop yourself from getting the job that you want. To build your personal credit rating, you need to look back through the past.

Building a personal credit rating takes time. From the time that you sign for your first credit card to where you are today, every move you have made in the financial market has been recorded on your credit rating. This rating is collected by third party companies and credit reporting agencies. These companies collect information about you by the creditors that you are working with. This is done as a collective effort. Nearly all creditors report to these agencies and they each share the information (when legally allowed to) about you. They all benefit. You can't stop them from reporting accurate information.

Personal credit rating information is gathered throughout your history, but this does not mean you can't do something about it. One of the most important things you can do to improve your credit rating is to get a copy of your credit reports and verify that the information provided there is correct. It is estimated that 80 percent of credit reports contain some errors on them. These errors are not fixed for you automatically, though. There is no way for companies to catch the errors themselves. Therefore, it is up to you to do so, or the errors will remain on your credit report for years to come.

Pulling a credit report for yourself is easy to do. Each of the three large credit reporting agencies provides you with a copy of the credit report they have for you without cost one time per year. The three large agencies are TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. By requesting a copy of your report even just one time per year, you can check for errors.

Look for the following errors:

* Credit accounts that you do not have.

* Accounts that are reported incorrectly, such as being late when you know they were paid on time.

* Accounts that are missing information.

* Mistakes in balances, credit limits.

* Collection accounts.

* Inquiries (people who have checked your credit score) without permission to do so.

* Reports that are older than 7 years old, except for bankruptcies and foreclosures which remain on your report for up to ten years.

Anything you find on your credit report that you do not feel is accurate should be reported to the agency since it is affecting your personal credit rating. Mistakes can lower your credit score, which is the number given to your credit history. To report any errors on your credit report, follow the instructions provided by the credit reporting agency as each has a step-by-step method to help you report errors.

Your personal credit rating is a very important piece of information. It takes years to develop a good credit rating, but just a few errors on your report can cause you to instantly see a lower credit score. To build a good credit personal credit rating, pay bills on time, keep your credit lines lower than the balances and check your credit report at least one time per year from each of the three major agencies.

For more insights and additional information about building up your Personal Credit Rating as well as having the opportunity to get free copies of your credit reports from the major credit reporting agencies, please visit our web site at http://www.credit-help-center.com