Hard Inquiry

Behind the Green Door. The Devil in Miss Jones. Hard Inquiry. All classics of early 1970s cinema.

Also, it's a term related to your credit score.

In recent years, credit checks have become a somewhat casual affair. People check their own credit all the time to make sure no one is stealing their identities. Potential employers use credit checks as part of routine candidate screening. It's become a common first-date ice breaker.

Those might be considered soft inquiries. Then there's the hard stuff.

A hard inquiry involves a potential lender looking into your credit because they are actually considering giving you a loan. You know, the reason that credit scores exist at all. It can come up when you apply for a mortgage, or a credit card, or a bank loan, or a car loan, or whatever else you need money for.

These hard inquiries can impact your score. Though they belong to a portion of the equation that impacts only 10% of a credit score, a hard inquiry can make your overall number dip by a few points.

Basically, if you're running all over town, asking people for money, triggering hard inquiry after hard inquiry, creditors tend to get a little suspicious. Thus, the act of having someone go that far down the road in considering giving you a loan counts against your credit score.