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So you're finally in a position to repair your credit. You've obtained a copy of your credit report... and realized you have no idea what you're looking at. How are you supposed to repair your credit if you can't even figure out what your credit report says?

Your "credit report" is created by businesses or lenders with which you have a credit account. These organizations issue reports on your credit status to the top three Credit Reporting Agencies (CRA) - TransUnion, Experian or Equifax (1). In turn, the agencies create compilations of the reports and offer them to anyone seeking information on your credit status.

Please note that your credit score may or may not be included with your credit report. Although your credit score is created with information from your credit report, it is not a component of that report. If your report does not contain your credit score, you can find it on the website of any of the top three CRAs.

In order to best understand the contents of your credit report, what follows is an explanation of the titles and terms used in each section. Fair warning- this stuff is a little dry. Unfortunately, no one ever said credit repair is an exciting process.

This description is based on a 3-agency credit report as received from TransUnion's "TrueCredit" (2) service. Reports received from other services are likely to be similar in form:

Personal Information: The beginning of your credit report will list your name, date of birth, current address, past addresses, current employer and past employers. The CRAs receive data for the Personal Information section from applications you have filled out for credit that have prompted inquiries for your credit report.

Summary: This is simply a summary list of the accounts showing on your credit report and their status. The summary will most likely list the number of delinquent and derogatory items but not the number of positive items.

Account History: This section is the "meat" of your credit report; it lists all of your current accounts and their status. Each item in your Account History will list the creditor name, type of account, high balance and account standing. Positive items stay on your credit report indefinitely. Negative items can only remain on your report for seven years.

A short word on negative vs. positive items: simply put, a negative item is an account that is overdue or sent to collections. Positive items are any accounts in good standing. The more negative items that are on your report, the

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