Credit reports contain financial records of debts you owe and ones you’ve paid off. Positive information can remain on your credit reports indefinitely. Most negative information falls off your credit after seven years, though certain types of bankruptcy filings can remain longer.
Here’s a closer look at how financial records impact your credit reports.
How Long Do Inquiries Stay on a Credit Report?
When you apply for a loan, credit card, or line of credit the lender can perform what’s called a hard inquiry. This simply means that they pull copies of your credit reports, which they’ll use to make an approval decision.
Hard inquiries show up on a credit report and they’re included in your FICO® credit score calculations. Each new inquiry remains on your credit report for two years, according to FICO. However, they’re only considered in credit score calculations for the first 12 months.
Soft inquiries occur when you check your credit reports yourself or a company pulls your credit for the purposes of prequalifying or preapproving you for a loan. These inquiries won’t show up on a credit report, and they don’t have any impact on your credit score.
That distinction is important if you’re learning how to build credit.
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Recommended: How Long Does It Take to Build Credit?
How Long Does Negative Information Remain on Your Credit Report?
Negative information on a credit report is any information that’s harmful to your credit score. What affects your credit score negatively? The list includes:
• Late payments
• Missed payments
• Collection accounts
• Judgments
• Foreclosures
• Bankruptcies
Generally, negative information can stay on your credit report for up to seven years. Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 bankruptcy, however, can stick around on your credit report for 10 years.
In terms of how negative items impact your credit score, age matters, according to FICO. Newer negative items, such as collections or late payments, have a more immediate impact on your scores than negative items that are several years old. A money tracker app makes it easy to track your credit and your money in real time so you can get ahead financially.
How Long Does Positive Information Remain on Your Credit Report?
Positive information can remain on credit reports indefinitely. Credit bureaus are not required to remove this information, though they may do so at the seven-year mark. Examples of positive information that can stay on a credit report, regardless of time, include:
• On-time payments
• Open accounts that have a $0 balance or a low balance, relative to your credit limit
• Closed accounts that you’ve paid in full
Positive items on a credit report are a good thing, since they help your credit scores. On-time payments and low balances on credit accounts have the biggest impact overall. Making biweekly payments or increasing your credit limits are two helpful ideas for how to lower credit utilization. Using a spending app to manage your budget and expenses can also help keep credit card balances low.
How to Remove Negative Information From Your Credit Report
Negative information that’s accurate cannot be removed from a credit report. For example, if you miss several payments on a loan but get caught up later, those late payments will stay on your credit reports until you hit the seven-year mark.
Inaccurate information, on the other hand, can be removed through the dispute process. Examples of inaccurate or incorrect items you could dispute on a credit report include:
• On-time payments that were not properly attributed to your account
• Credit accounts that don’t belong to you
• Paid-in-full accounts that still show a balance on your credit reports
• Account activity relating to fraudulent activity or identity theft
You’ll need to dispute the inaccurate information with the credit bureau that reports it. All three credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — allow you to initiate credit report disputes online. You’ll need to fill out a dispute form and provide some details about the dispute.
Once the credit bureau receives the dispute, it’s required to investigate your claim and return a decision to you promptly. If the credit bureau finds that there’s an error on your reports, it’s legally required to remove or update the information.
Your credit score updates monthly for the most part. Enrolling in credit score monitoring can make it easier to track changes, including changes to your score following a dispute.
Recommended: Why Did My Credit Score Drop After a Dispute?
Do You Still Have to Pay a Debt If It Fell Off Your Credit Report?
A debt can fall off your credit report if enough time passes. However, the amount owed doesn’t go away. Creditors and debt collectors could still attempt to get you to pay if the statute of limitations hasn’t passed.
The statute of limitations on debt allows creditors and debt collectors a set window of time in which to sue you for an unpaid balance. Each state determines how long the statute of limitations applies but in all states, its expiration doesn’t remove your legal obligation to pay what you owe.
Should you pay old debts? Ethically, yes. But if a debt falls off your credit report and the statute of limitations has expired, it would be very difficult for a creditor to force you to pay via a lawsuit.
The Takeaway
Reviewing your credit reports regularly is a good way to see what’s helping or hurting your score at any given time. If you have negative items on your credit report, you might see your score drop, but those points can come back with the passage of time.
Take control of your finances with SoFi. With our financial insights and credit score monitoring tools, you can view all of your accounts in one convenient dashboard. From there, you can see your various balances, spending breakdowns, and credit score. Plus you can easily set up budgets and discover valuable financial insights — all at no cost.
FAQ
What stays on a credit report forever?
Positive information can stay on a credit report forever, as credit bureaus are not required to remove any items that help your credit score. However, credit bureaus can choose to remove positive information after seven years.
Can credit information stay on my credit report for over 7 years?
Credit information can stay on your credit report for over seven years if it’s positive. Generally, negative information cannot stay on your report for more than seven years, unless you file for Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In that case, the bankruptcy filing could stay on your report for 10 years.
Do old accounts fall off a credit report?
Old accounts can fall off your credit report after seven years if they have negative information. Positive information from old accounts or newer ones can stay on your credit reports indefinitely.
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