Who Says My Credit Score Is Important

Your credit report is the record of many things you have done financially. It is important because it can come into play when you try to get mortgages, auto loans, or even title loans.

Enjoy the convenience of online banking with ICCU – the Illinois Community Credit Union – Our goal is to return our profits to our members by offering more service with lower rates on services such as Dekalb Mortgages and Sycamore Auto Loans.

Understanding the basics of your credit report and why it is important is a first step. Then you have to go about the business of enhancing it and protecting it from harm. It can be harmed either by you – by having poor credit behavior – or sometimes by someone else – in the case of identity theft for example.

Each of the three important credit reporting agencies have a report for each consumer. What happens is that when you apply for a loan or you have an open credit account, the creditor will report all of your activity to the reporting bureaus. This means that if you make your payments on time and you are responsible with your loans, they will report this to the credit agencies.

In an ideal world your credit report would have a record of every single transaction and all of these things added together would result in a credit score that sums up your potential risk for creditors. However, since we do not live in an ideal world, reporting often lags and is incomplete. Such an imperfect system requires each of us to be diligent to check the accuracy of our credit reports.

An individual consumer can get a copy of his or her credit report from the reporting agencies at no cost once a year. In the Dekalb and Sycamore area this can be very useful when applying for a mortgage or car loan. This can be obtained online through each of the reporting agency websites. Additionally, consumers can pay to have their credit report at any time and many websites offer monitoring to make sure that everything on your report is correct.