Your Payday Loan and Your Free Credit Report


If you have not obtained a free credit report recently, you may not be sure of what is on your credit report and what you do not know could really prove to be harmful. Your credit report is essentially a summary of your activities in terms of credit. The credit report will provide a listing of any accounts or loans that you have as well as the frequency of payments made on those accounts and loans and the balances on those accounts. It will also reveal if there has been action taken due to bills not being paid.

You are entitled to receive a copy of your free credit report once per year. If you should need to receive a copy of your credit report more frequently you can purchase a copy of your credit report from a consumer reporting agency or credit bureau. There are three nationally based credit reporting bureaus. They are Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

Your free credit report will also reflect your credit rating. Your credit rating is a reflection of the health of your credit activity. When you have a good credit rating you will be able to borrow funds. When you have a poor credit rating you will be charged higher interest rates and may be denied loans. Due to the strong impact that your credit score can have such a strong impact on your borrowing abilities, it is critically important to make sure that you check your free credit report annually.

You may wonder who has the right to see your credit report. This is a common question for individuals who are applying for payday loans. Although a payday loan lender certainly has the right to see your credit report because they are considering loaning you money that is usually not the case. This is because most payday loan lenders do not perform credit checks when making a decision regarding whether they will approve a payday loan or not.

Credit reports can be provided anytime that you provide permission for a credit check to be performed. Of course, a free credit report will also be provided to you once per year when you request it as well. Keep in mind that you must require the free credit report every twelve months. It will not be automatically provided on an annual basis.

When you review your free credit report you will find that it basically contains four different types of information. First, your credit report will contain information that identifies you such as your full name, any aliases you may have used, your current address, year of birth, Social Security number and your current as well as past employers.

Along with this information, your free credit report will also contain credit information. This information will include any accounts that you may have with retailers, banks, utility companies, credit card companies and any other lenders. The credit report will list the type of account as well as the date the account was opened and the credit limit or amount of the loan. Your payment pattern for the preceding two years will be listed as well.

Your free credit report will also provide any information that may be on the public record such as bankruptcy, monetary judgments, tax liens, etc. Finally, the credit report will list any recent inquiries that have been made into your credit. In other words, it will list the names of any organization or person that has requested your credit report over the past year.

It is always a good idea to obtain a copy of your free credit report once a year in order to make sure that you know what is present on your credit report. You may find some information that is negative on your credit report and which could prevent you from obtaining a loan. If that is the case, you will need to take steps to repair your credit. One way to do that is to take out a short term loan, such as a payday loan, and then repay it in a timely basis. This will not remove any prior negative information that may be on your credit report. For example, if you have late payments then that information will remain on your credit report for two years. Checking your free credit report and then ensuring that good information is listed on your report can help to show that you are now demonstrating financial responsibility.

Whether a lender will actually approve you for a loan is an individual lender decision that is based on that lender's underwriting guidelines, but monitoring your credit report carefully using a free credit report is a good way to begin improving your credit in order to improve your chances of receiving a loan.