Getting Your Credit Report for Free

Checking your credit report every so often is a wise step to gauge your financial situation as well as to make sure the credit bureaus have correct information. Like many of you probably have, I've seen commercials for places that offer free credit reports, or gotten flyers as credit card inserts about getting my reports free. For the most part they all seem to give you the free reports if you join some sort of service. Usually there's a free trial period and then a monthly or annual fee. Other companies get you your credit reports as a regular service they sell, generally packaged with tools to give you advice on improving credit scores -- I have to confess that I signed up for one of these paid services after watching a financial management presentation... oops!

Turns out that the three credit bureaus were mandated by the Federal Government to allow consumers to get a copy of each of their reports at no cost once a year. I guess businesses were smart to grab all the website names with "free" and "credit report" in their titles first, so the obvious names freecreditreports etc. actually take you to services you will pay for.

The website for the Federally-required credit reports at no cost to you is http://www.annualcreditreport.com/. You are entitled to get an annual copy of each report: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. My suggestion is to stagger them throughout the year, so you have a wider view of your credit scores and any changes or issues.

Once you get the reports, you can check on them for any incorrect information which you have the right to correct, or any red flags that may show an area that is causing your score to be less than ideal. Since your score will impact things like credit card interest rates, types of offers you receive, mortgage and car loan interest, and sometimes even your insurance rates, it's wise to keep those scores up there.

It's nice to know, though, you don't have to pay to simply get the information.