Your Credit Reports and Scores

Welcome to the Consumer Credit Library. This website is a collection of Q&A articles relating to credit reports and scores, and related topics. If you have questions about your credit reports and scores, you'll find plenty of straight answers below.

Two Years Worth of Credit Q&A

This project began back in 2008, when we first set up our Q&A service for consumers. Since then, we have received more than 1,700 questions about credit reports and scores. Many of those questions were redundant, so we didn't answer them all. But we sure covered a lot. If you use the search tool over to the right, you'll have access to more than 500 articles on credit reports and scores -- along with related topics like mortgages and home buying.

Top 5 Questions, Based on Traffic

1. What credit score is needed to buy a home?
This is by far the most popular page in the credit reports and scores section of our website, it also ranks #1 across the entire site. That means it gets visited more than any of the other 2,000+ pages on the site. This article also includes a video lesson from the author. We think you'll find it helpful. Here's a similar article that also brings in a lot of visitors. 

2. How do I raise my credit score fast?
A lot of people who wrote in over the years were planning to buy a house soon. They knew they had bad credit, and they were in a hurry to fix it so they could qualify for a mortgage. In this video tutorial, Brandon explains some of the things you can do to boost your score quickly.

3. How long does a foreclosure stay on my credit?
his article pulls in two types of readers. The first group is made up of people who've been through a foreclosure already. They want to know how long it's going to stay on their credit report. The second group consists of homeowners who are planning to walk away from their mortgage obligation, perhaps because they are underwater in the loan. When you add these two groups together, you have the third-most-popular credit lesson on the entire website.

4. How long does it take to improve my credit score?
This is a hard one to answer, because there are so many variables involved. It depends on the type of derogatory information on your credit report, the amount of damage that has been done, and the actions taken to improve the score. With that said, this lesson will help you understand what it takes to improve a score significantly -- and how long it might take you.

5. What happens if you don't pay your credit card bills?
This one is also a sign of the times. After the housing crash of 2008, and the recession that followed, a lot of people were faced with this dilemma. So we created an article that explains the process that generally takes place when a consumer stops paying on a credit account.

If you want to learn more about your credit report and scores, try using the search box provided above. This will give you access to the full library of credit information on this website, which includes more than 500 individual articles. We hope you find it helpful.

Please Note: We are no longer accepting credit-related questions. This section of the website has been placed into an archive status.