Or click the image to get it. Your credit record is your financial reputation. It counts big in this world. If you want to rent an apartment, buy a house, get a phone hooked up, obtain a credit card, take out a loan, buy a blimp or start a business, you need a good credit record. A company that wants to check your credit can call other companies that have done money deals with you in the past, or they can get a report from a credit reporting bureau.
Credit bureaus are private institutions that sell credit information to other businesses.
Creditors, landlords and employers pay these bureaus for reports on people they re considering as customers, tenants or employees, to determine their financial character. The credit bureaus get their information on you from credit card companies and others who have issued you credit. If you ve made on-time payments every month for the past year, your report shows this in a series of uninterrupted good marks. And if you ve missed any payments, these show up as bad marks. At a glance, anyone looking at your report knows how reliable you are.