The FTC requires that copies of your credit report (from all three major national credit reporting companies) be made available free of charge annually, and free must really mean free! Checking your credit report is important, if for no other reason than to make sure that there are no accounts or cards that you are unaware of. And taking advantage of the annual free report is a no brainer.
My annual reminder just popped up, I am printing my three reports right now, and am therefore reminding you to do the same. If you’ve not done so recently, the site you want to visit is www.annualcreditreport.com. (And yes, the individual sites will try to sell you stuff you don’t need – just click the No Thanks options).
Public Service Announcement: Check You Free Annual Credit Report
5 responses to “Public Service Announcement: Check You Free Annual Credit Report”
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A timely reminder; But better to stagger your report every four months, that way you can keep on eye on your overall situation and never later than 4 months. You get one free per year per bureau. So why do them all at the same time, they are mostly the same anyway.
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Good point!
— Ben -
There are also services that you can subscribe to that can send you an email alert if and when your credit is used or is changed. I’m not sure what service we use, my wife is our personal accountant. I just know that we have this type of service and it has come in handy on one occassion so far.
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Can you provide a link to such service, I would be interested in checking out this type of service since I am 100% DEBT FREE and after the 10 years it took me to get out of debt, I will need to pay special attention to my credit report.
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I’ll have to disagree with Larry a little bit. I had a collection listed on my equifax that was a.) not valid and b.) not listed on transunion or experian. If I didn’t get them all at the same time I may have caused myself to lose something I applied for if the company I went with used equifax 🙂
Theres also a few pay services that aren’t that expensive that will send you quarterly reports of all three or the deltas as someone above said.
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