Credit basics · 5 minute read
Hard and soft inquiries
Checking your own credit does nothing. Applying for things does. And the rate-shopping window means a fortnight of car loan applications counts once.
The difference
A hard inquiry happens when you apply for credit and a lender pulls your file to decide. It is visible to other lenders and it affects your score slightly.
A soft inquiry happens when you check your own report, when a lender pre-screens you for an offer you did not ask for, when an existing creditor reviews your account, and in most employment or tenant checks. It is visible only to you and affects nothing.
Checking your own credit does not lower your score. It cannot. It is a soft inquiry, it is not shown to lenders, and you may do it every week for free at annualcreditreport.com. People avoid looking at their own file for years because of this myth, and the avoidance costs them far more than any inquiry ever could.
How much a hard inquiry actually costs
Usually fewer than five points on a healthy file, and often nothing measurable. The effect fades over roughly twelve months even though the entry remains visible for twenty-four.
The exception is a cluster of applications in a short period across different kinds of credit, which reads as someone urgently seeking money. Six credit card applications in a fortnight is a signal. One is not.
Rate shopping is protected
You are meant to compare offers on a mortgage, a car loan or a student loan, so the models group them. Multiple inquiries of the same type inside a short window — 14 days on older FICO versions, 45 on newer ones, and there is a 30-day buffer before recent inquiries count at all — are treated as one event.
Which means the correct way to buy a car is to do all your rate shopping inside two weeks rather than spreading it politely over three months. The cautious approach is the one that costs you.
What to do about old ones
Nothing, if they are yours. They fall off on their own and they were never worth much.
If there is an inquiry you do not recognise, that is different and it is worth pursuing — it can be the first visible sign of identity theft, and it is often the earliest one. Ask the bureau who made it, contact that lender, and if you were not the applicant, place a free fraud alert and start at IdentityTheft.gov.
Nobody here is going to tell you off.
The first conversation is free, it takes about half an hour, and it ends with you knowing what is actually on your file and what can honestly be done about it. If the answer is "nothing we can charge for", we will tell you that, and you will still get the plan.
Not ready to talk to anyone? Take the guide and do it yourself. It is the same method, it costs nothing, and you never have to tell us you used it.