Across all media platforms today you will find credit myth information on almost any topic or subject, but sadly, much of the information concerning credit is inaccurate.

Here are some common credit myths being thrown about:

Credit Myth 2: “It will take you seven years to improve your credit.”

This is one of the widespread credit myths. In actuality, it’s an ongoing process to improve one’s credit. It doesn’t take a certain amount of time. Most negative items will remain on your credit report for up to seven years, as long as they are accurate, can be verified, the credit bureau and creditor reporting the item can and will provide the appropriate validation of the debt and the debt actually occurred within that period of time being reported.

Of course, many items are NOT accurately reported and are not verifiable, therefore they can and should be removed.

Regardless of whether or not individual line items can be corrected or deleted, though, you can start to improve your credit. It can be done by maintaining a positive payment history, maintaining lower balances, and low utilization rates on your credit cards. It can also be done by establishing new accounts to get your new payment history going smoothly again.

Credit Myth 3: “A serious financial crisis like a foreclosure or bankruptcy permanently hurts your credit score.”

Foreclosures will remain on your credit report for seven years, Bankruptcies can linger for seven to ten years: this is entirely dependent upon how the bankruptcy gets filed. Chapter 13 will remain for seven years, whereas Chapter 7 will remain for a decade. Note, however, that the actual bankruptcy in the public records section will remain there for ten years either way.

One must remember that the reporting of a Foreclosure or Bankruptcy on a credit report must meet the same criteria that any other item must meet in order to stay on a person’s credit report and that is that all reported information pertaining to that foreclosure or bankruptcy be reported accurately and be able to be verified and validated by both the party reporting the item and the party recording the item.

Absent of that verification and validation the item must be removed from the credit report regardless of when it originally took place.

The important take-away point is that although these are certainly long periods of time, it’s not permanent, and there are many things you can do after a financial crisis to reestablish your credit and get your credit back on track.

These are just a few of the Credit Myths you find today reported online, on TV, and published on Social Media and other news outlets. Don’t be fooled, you can take control of your financial and credit future by handling your current finances responsibly and demanding your rights under the law that ALL information that is being reported about you be 100% accurate 100% of the time.

FICO now competes with Vantage Score but Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion still offer both score options. This is partly because FICO is so widely used and accepted by commercial lenders and is the only credit scoring system recognized and used by the Federal Government when determining the credit worthiness of a consumer for a government-guaranteed loan.

FICO vs Vantage Credit Scoring

When using “programs” such as Credit Karma, and MyFreeCreditReport.com the consumer will think that they are looking at a FICO score, but in reality, what they are looking at is the Vantage Score generated by the credit bureau.

This by the way is designed to generate a higher score than a FICO score and in the opinion of this writer is done so on purpose to give a consumer a false sense of what his/her credit scoring really is.

In reality, it really makes no difference in credit score variations. Credit score variations are inevitable because the data the credit bureaus collect is still derived from different sources, not all data furnishers report their information to all of the credit reporting agencies.

So, the problem of varying credit scoring will not be solved by the new Vantage Score.

The three bureaus are branding the Vantage Score as something that will help banks and lenders further hone the subprime categories. Subprime lenders are those banks and lenders dedicated to borrowers with poor credit or harder-to-approve loans. Subprime loans have higher interest rates and fat lending fees.

In today’s credit-crunched economy, this is a fast-growing market and the credit bureaus are hoping to use that as a selling point for Vantage Score. Slick marketing!

Unlike FICO’s traditional 300 to 850 scale, the Vantage Score goes from 501 to 990. Here is a breakdown of the credit scoring with the respective rating: