Free Credit Report
There’s a new website Credit.com that I saw linked from BoingBoing. You give them your address and social security number, and they give you back some general indicators of how good your credit is. Very easy to use, and the results, I believe are quite accurate.
For example, I was dinged for not having an auto loan or a mortgage–OK, so having less debt is bad? The explanation they give you is interesting:
You don’t appear to have a healthy mix of accounts on your credit report.
You could be doing better in this category if you had a more diverse list of accounts. And, if you have finance company accounts on your credit report that could be hurting you as well. Finance companies are generally considered to be higher risk lenders who target higher risk customers. As such, consumers who have finance company accounts on their credit reports could suffer lower scores.
If you ever have a mortgage that shows up on your credit report then you will do better in this category. The reason is that studies show that consumers who have mortgages are more stable than consumers who do not. And, credit scores will reward you because of that stability.
They had some interesting statistics too, such as how long you’ve been “in the system” in terms of credit age:
7 years of credit history
Youngest account is 7 months
Oldest account is 85 months
Average age is 44 months
Neat stuff. Again, as it’s totally free, I really recommend checking out Credit.com. Leave some comments on this post and let me know what you think. Many credit reporting online companies are scams looking to steal your information and resell it–this one doesn’t seem to be.
