Many people know that their credit score can affect their lives in many ways, but a lot of the people are unaware of what their credit score is.  A personal credit score is something that people see on a regular basis, so it is difficult for many people to determine what credit category they fall into.  There are a couple of different methods that a person can use to determine their credit score and see where they fall on the credit scale.

Estimating Your Credit Score

The first way to determine a person’s credit score is credit estimation.  Using this method, the person takes the amount of debt that they are carrying and their financial actions over the last several years to determine whether their credit score has been increasing or decreasing.  For example, a person that has been able to pay off their credit cards, put some money in a savings account, and have not been late on any of their bills for the past several years can expect to have their credit score increase while people that have missed some payments and have used more than 50% of their available credit can expect their credit score to decrease.

Although this method of determining a person’s credit score is imprecise, it will give them a reasonable estimate of what their credit score may be.  As long as the person is honest about their actions over the past few years and accurately remembers how much of their available credit they are using, they should be able to correctly judge the credit category that they currently fall into.  There are even some credit score calculators available on the internet that will take your information and calculate your credit score range.

Requesting The Information

Another method of determining a person’s credit score is to obtain the person’s actual credit history and score from one of the three major credit rating companies.  Getting your free credit report and free credit score can be difficult because the person will need to verify their identity to the company before their personal credit information can be released.  In some cases, it can take up to two weeks to obtain the information that the person is looking for because of the number of requests that these companies handle each day from businesses and individuals alike and if there is a problem with the information that is submitted, it can take even longer for the person to find out their credit score. In my situation, I ended up getting my credit report online because the process is much quicker.