How to read your credit report and what to look for

A credit report has five parts: personal information, accounts, collections, public records and inquiries. Read it one part at a time and ask two questions of every line: is this mine, and are the amounts and dates right? Layouts differ between Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, but the content is the same, and the free reports from AnnualCreditReport.com contain no score at all. The report is the raw material; scores are calculated from it separately (see why FICO and VantageScore differ).

Set aside 15 minutes per bureau and download all three. Lenders do not all report to every bureau, so an error can live on one report and not the others.

Personal information: check it first

This section lists the names, addresses, partial Social Security number, date of birth and sometimes employers that creditors have reported for you. None of it feeds your score. It still matters, because an address you never lived at or a name variation you never used is the earliest sign of two problems: a mixed file (someone else’s data merged into yours) or identity theft. Both are disputable, and identity theft has a faster remedy, described in the first 24 hours after identity theft.

Accounts: what each field means

Each loan or card is a “tradeline.” Here is a made-up card account with the fields most reports show and what to check in each:

“Closed by consumer” has a legal basis: when you close an account, the creditor must tell the bureau, and the bureau must show it (FCRA §605(e)). It protects you from looking like the lender shut you down. A closed account in good standing can stay for up to 10 years and keeps adding to your history in the meantime.

The payment grid: 30, 60, 90 and beyond

Below each account sits a month-by-month grid. A check mark or “OK” means paid on time; 30, 60, 90, 120, 150 and 180 mark how many days past due you were that month; “CO” or similar marks a charge-off. Each bureau prints a legend, so read it once.

Creditors report a payment as late only once it is 30 or more days past due, so a payment a week late should never appear in the grid. If it does, that is a factual error with a clean fix: your bank record showing the payment date.

For any negative account, find the date of first delinquency or the estimated removal date the report gives (bureaus label it differently). That date sets the seven-year clock. A late payment you later caught up on falls off seven years after that late payment; collections and charge-offs follow the rule explained in how long negative marks last. If a collector reports a later date of first delinquency than the original creditor did, the debt may have been re-aged, and that is worth disputing: the law requires the date of the original delinquency (FCRA §623(a)(5)).

Collections and public records

Collection accounts usually appear in their own section with the collector’s name, the original creditor, the amount and the date it was assigned. One debt can show twice, once on the original account (charged off, $0 balance if sold) and once as the collection. The balance should appear on only one of them; owing it twice on paper is a common, disputable error.

Medical collections follow special bureau policies: paid medical collections and those under $500 are not reported, and unpaid ones wait a year before appearing. If you see one that breaks those rules, see how medical debt is reported now.

Public records are shorter than they used to be. Equifax, Experian and TransUnion stopped including civil judgments in 2017 and tax liens in 2018, so bankruptcy is the only public record you should see. A foreclosure shows up as the status of the mortgage account, not as a public record.

Inquiries: two different lists

Hard inquiries are the applications you made, visible to lenders for two years. Soft inquiries, often labeled promotional, account review or consumer requests, appear only on the copy you see and never affect a score. Check the hard list for any lender you do not recognize; an unknown inquiry can mean someone applied in your name. What inquiries cost in points is covered in what a hard inquiry really costs.

Statements, dispute flags and what to do next

Near the end you may see a consumer statement (a short note you added about a dispute) or a flag such as “account information disputed by consumer,” which the creditor must report while a dispute is open. Both stay until removed.

Before you close the PDF, run this checklist:

1. Every account is yours, with the right responsibility (individual, joint, authorized user).
2. Balances and limits match your latest statements.
3. No late marks for months you paid on time, and no account reported late twice for the same month.
4. Dates of first delinquency match your records and have not moved forward after a debt was sold.
5. Every hard inquiry is one you made.

Anything that fails goes into a written dispute with each bureau that shows it, with copies of your proof. The steps and deadlines are in how to dispute a credit report error, and the CFPB’s credit reports and scores guide covers the same rights.