College Tip 2- What’s in a credit report- Credit Summary

This is the second post in a series about how college kids can help protect themselves from ID Theft. Part 1 can be found here.

The Credit Summary we provide gives an overview of what types of account are open under a person’s name. There are 5 pieces of information on this page:

• Real estate accounts (this is any payment a person is making in the form or a mortgage).
• Revolving accounts (this is a summary of how many credit cards a person has in their name).
• Installment Accounts (this is a summary of recurring payments a person has in their name, such as a car payment).
• Other accounts.
• A derogatory summary (this highlights anything that might be driving your credit score down).

Each of the first 4 categories has Count, Balance, Current and Closed as subcategories. This shows how many of each type of accounts a person has, what their outstanding balance might be, how many are still open, and how many have been closed.

The Derogatory Summary shows recent inquiries on a person's credit, any places that a person has been in collections, and current or prior delinquencies.

This page is a great snapshot of a person's overall lines of credit (both open and closed), and you can quickly look to confirm that information is accurate here.

Posted by Mike