According to the New York Times (2018), “… more people are checking their credit and more are knowledgeable about how the scores work.
RELATED: Do You Understand The 5 Components Of Your Credit Score?
Check Thy Credit, Know Thy Credit
In a survey about credit scores published this week, 57 percent of adults said they had “obtained or received” their scores in the past year, up from about half four years ago.
The eighth annual survey was commissioned by the Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit advocacy group, and VantageScore Solutions, a credit model created to compete with FICO, the dominant score provider.
Your credit is a proprietary, calculated score and those are three-digit numbers that lenders use to judge the creditworthiness of borrowers. A score summarizes information in your credit report, which is a compilation of information about your loans and credit card accounts.
Generally, the higher your score, the better interest rate you'll get when opening a credit card account or taking out a mortgage or car loan.
Stephen Brobeck, the federation's executive director, called the findings “encouraging” because those who have checked their scores are more knowledgeable than those who have not.
For instance, 93 percent of those who had recently checked their score knew that mortgage lenders use credit scores, compared with 74 percent of those who hadn't.”
What does that mean for you? Check your credit! And you can do it through our credit restoration and financial protection plan, your credit score in real-time.
Of course, you can go online for a freebie credit score but those are at least 30 days behind as they do not update immediately and the algorithm or model may not be in line with your financial objectives. In other words, the score is inaccurate and misleading, unlike a real-time model.
Just like financial planning, it takes time to monitor your score and know that it will change constantly depending on your credit card usage and loan payments.
There is a lot of science that goes into a credit score. That is how the big 3 (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) make their corporate big bucks.
Want to see your score in real-time and know where your money and efforts are going? Look into a financial protection plan at thecreditfreak.com and get going on staying on top of your credit. With 4 out of 5 credit reports having errors, it is best to get control know.
Check Thy Credit, Know Thy Credit!
References:
Partial content credited to The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com. Ann Carrns, Your Money Advisor.