Your credit score. It could be your worst nightmare, or a dream come true. But most of the time it’s kind of like that rude mother in law coming to pay you a visit at your house. You are aware that she is coming to stay, and you are not looking forward to it, but you are too nervous to ask or even consider how long she might be paying you that visit. OK, so that analogy wasn’t that great. But anyway, read on to see just how long negative marks will stay on your credit history.

First, there are mistakes on your credit report. This happens when something that you didn’t do, or an account that doesn’t belong to you shows up on your score when you are looking it over. These will be removed immediately. Looking for and removing mistakes on your credit report are a crucial reason why we should check our credit scores at least once a year. If you do find a mistake, or a negative account that isn’t yours, get in touch with the credit reporting agency and the creditor too. Within 180 days you should be able to have that negative mark taken off your record.

Whenever a creditor pulls your credit report (which means that they ask to see it), something called a hard inquiry will be reported on your record. If it is only an occasional hard inquiry this most likely won’t hurt. However, if there are a large amount of inquiries recorded on your record, this will generally make prospective creditors think that you need the cash and you need it fast.

If a potential lender looks at your credit score and sees that they are the tenth financial institution that you have asked for money, they will have cause to be wary. Although the credit reporting gods will concede that people shop around for loans and credit, and say you have, two weeks where you have a lot of inquiries, they will take that into consideration and not penalize you too much, the bottom line is that the more hard inquiries that show up on your report, the lower your score will be. Hard inquiries last up to two years.

Not all inquiries will negatively affect your credit score. A soft inquiry is when you check on your own credit score, or when potential creditors check your credit to see if they want to make you any unsolicited offers of credit. Actually, lenders see this as a good sign. If you are regularly checking your credit report, you are most likely fiscally responsible. To be continued in part two…

Mallory Megan works for Rapid Recovery Solution and writes articles about commercial collection agencies. Free reprint avaialable from: How Long Will A Negative Mark Stay On Your Credit Score? Part One.