An important part of managing your finances is obtaining and reviewing your credit report on a regular basis. This allows you to see whether anything negative has been added that could harm your credit and whether there are any mistakes that need to be corrected. A single mistake on your credit report can decrease your credit score by a significant amount and could even cause a credit application to be denied. There are several different ways to get your credit report for free and each of these methods is simple to use.
Government Sponsored Website
A federal law established that every person has the right to obtain one free credit report per year from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus to see what those entities are reporting about them. The credit reports can be obtained from www.annualcreditreport.com and the individual can request to have one, two, or all of their credit reports sent to them at their mailing address. This is the one website where individuals can get a credit report for free without any strings attached.
Application Rejection
If a credit or housing application is rejected by the company, you have the right to request a copy of the credit report that the company used to determine that your application should be rejected. This allows you to see what they saw and know exactly why the company decided not to accept your application. Many people do not realize that an error has been entered onto their credit report until their application for additional credit has been rejected, so this provides them with an easy way to determine whether something is wrong with the information in their credit report.
Commercial Companies
There are a number of commercial companies available that promise to give you your credit report for free if you sign up for one of their services on a trial basis. Although the credit report and the service do not cost anything initially, if the service is not canceled by the cut off date, the person may find that their credit card has been charged an “enrollment fee” to continue the service for the next month or year. It is important to choose the company that you use for this method carefully because many individuals have had difficulty canceling the service after they were initially signed up for the trial.
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Great informational piece. I believe annualcreditreport now allows consumers to get their credit report from each bureaus twice a year now (as opposed to one).
I remember reading an industry study stating that 4 in 5 credit report contains some type of errors, kinda scary huh?
Because the information is entered by humans, it is subject to human error. It is best to find the errors as quickly as possible while they are still fairly easy to fix.