What Makes a Good Credit Report? - Tips On What's Important

Nov. 25, 2010 - PRLog -- A good credit report must contain certain essential items. Often people take actions that appear to make financial sense at the time; however, they can damage their credit rating in the long term with these mistakes.

In general, the following factors make for a good credit report:

- No more than eleven accounts, open or closed, on the report
- No more than one change of address on the report
- Steady employment
- Regular payments
- No overdue payments, no defaults, no foreclosures, no late fees
- Low balances
- A credit score of a least 680

The following things make financial sense, but in fact can look bad on a credit report:

- Opening accounts to get special offers (for example, 15% off your purchase with a new account) and then closing them after paying the balance. While this is a deal, it increases the number of accounts on your credit report and in fact looks bad for the consumer.

- Using a credit card for a lot of purchases to take advantage of convenience and the thirty day grace period and then paying off the balance each month.

While this offers convenience and doesn’t cost you any interest, future creditors who get your report will only see the current balance on the account and will not realize you pay it off each month.

Read more at http://id-theftprevent.com/what-makes-good-credit-report

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Unique and interesting articles about security and health issues that affect people today. Topics covered are: Identity theft and credit card fraud.