New Year's Resolution: Get Your Free Credit Report

Filed in archive Credit on January 4, 2008

This is the time of year when every article is telling you what you should do to get a fresh start and make your life all boffo socko in 2008. So why should I be any different? Here's my resolution for you: get a copy of your credit report. It's free and easy. No, really.

There are a lot of scammers who try to give you a free credit report wrapped up in some larger paid package of credit monitoring and other services you really don't need. However, you are entitled to a no-hassle free credit report once per year from the three credit reporting agencies (Experian, equifax and TransUnion), with no worries of being forced into other products.

You do have to go here to get it, though: AnnualCreditReport.com. As the site says: "AnnualCreditReport.com is the official site to help consumers to obtain their free credit report." And it is, no BS.

Checking out your credit report is a good idea, especially if you've been a little sketchy in your past credit history, but even if you haven't. Here's why:

Both your creditors and the credit reporting agencies screw up sometimes, and if you don't get their errors fixed, it could hurt you next time you want a loan. One of your credit card accounts may fail to inform the reporting agencies that you've closed an account. Or, worse, someone else's account might mistakenly get attached to your credit file-this can easily happen if someone has the same name as you, like a family member whose name is close to yours (especially if you are Robert Jr, Mike Jr., etc.), but anyone with your name or close to it. My sister once had a lawyer hounding her for months because someone with her exact name was writing bad checks. She tried to tell them to look at the Social Security numbers to see the difference, but it still took a long time to get it straightened out.

Point is, anything can happen, so you should get your report.

Two other notes:

1. Because you can get a free report from all three credit bureaus, it might make sense to stagger them, getting one in January, one in May, and one in September for example. That way you can keep a running tally of what's showing up on your reports. This is personally too much work for me, but may be worthwhile, especially if your credit has been bad and you're working to clean it up.

2. A credit report only shows your existing credit accounts, such as mortgages, car loans, credit card accounts, etc. It is NOT the same as your credit score. Your credit score is an actual number that the credit bureaus calculate based on your loan repayment history, and this number is used by lenders when you try to obtain new loans. You can see your credit score, too-but you do have to pay for it. All of the reporting agencies will gladly give it to you for $15 or $20 or a little more, depending on which agency you're talking about.

So there you go. Happy 2008!

Oh yeah, lose some weight, too.

(Photo credit to aNantaB, who took this picture as the new year was celebrated at Lappeenranta Harbor in Finland. Don't you love how those Scandinavians use a lot of letter repetition in their words. It would have been even better if the word was Laappeeenranta with an umlaut thrown in there somewhere.)