Credit Inquiries

How long do credit inquiries stay on your credit report? How bad does it hurt you to have a bunch of them on there?

 

Isn't it stupid they count at all?

 

I agree. Why penalize people for shopping around.

 

Why would you need to check your credit report more than twice a year? How many loans or new jobs or new apartment rentals can a person get in a year?

I think it should not be counted either, but the assumption is that if the record is accessed multiple times in a year, there is some problem.

 

If you have any credit cards those banks that hold their credit line are hitting you often. I run a free credit check on myself this month and I saw where Citibank had made 10 inquiries on me since last July. I have a sears card with a small balance and Citibank now owns them. I was told all the credit card companies are checking their accounts very regular hoping to catch their customers exceeding 50% of their credit line so they can automatically jack their interest rates up. This sucks.

 

Many of those random inquiries don't actually hurt your credit score. It's just the ones where you personally go in/call/apply for credit that count. For examply, in order for you to get multiple credit card offers each week in the mail someone pulled your credit score. Those don't really hurt your score. If they did, my score would be negative by now.

 

If you are shopping around for a car you can get a bunch of inquiries on there in a hurry.

 

Yes, from each dealer that pulls your credit. Those shouldn't be enough to hurt your credit score much at all though. If you're worried about an inquiry hurting your score then there is something else probably going on you should be more worried about.

 

These hits should be small enough to not really matter in another couple of months.

 

It is probably for the best anyway. I had rationalized that it would be better to buy a new car than to spend the money to repair my old one. That was probably the wrong decision anyway.