Credit scores are constantly evolving

I have asked Chad Kusner to address this question for this week's Ask the Expert Column. Contact Chad Kusner at 888-927-7760 or [email protected].

Part II: My clients call and say they have already obtained their own credit report. Then I run their report and my results are significantly different. How do I make sense of it all?

—Allison from Indiana

Last week I brought up the concept of a movie when discussing the movements of credit scores. This week we will delve deeper with regard to explaining this analogy. Whatever is going on in that "scene" in your credit movie is used to generate your scores. Because the scenes or accounts on our credit are constantly changing, we can never truly know what our scores are at any given time. Account balances can change, new inquiries can report, collections can show up, late payments can post and so forth.

Credit reporting is not exactly "real time," which means that, if I use a credit card today, the new balance will not be reflected on my report tomorrow. With that being said, it is relatively fluid and things can change literally overnight. We won't know what may have changed or what our scores are until we hit pause or submit. The process of how are scores are generated is cause for an entirely different topic. In the interim, the next time someone says "I have an 800 credit score," you can correct them and say "your score WAS 800 last time you hit pause!" As always thanks for reading, I hope you found this helpful, as my goal is to help you understand the mad, mad world of credit reporting.

—Chad Kusner

Dave Hershman has been the leading author and a top speaker for the industry for decades with six books authored and hundreds of articles published. His website is www.originationpro.com. If you have a reaction to this commentary or another question you would like answered in this column? Email Dave directly at [email protected].