Money Listens

You should have an annual check-up. Has it been at least 12 months since your last one? The three major Consumer Credit Reporting Companies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion have a central website for checking credit reports. It’s AnnualCreditReport.com. You may get a free report once a year from each company. You may get all three at once, or just one at a time. The companies are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, this is required by the Federal Trade Commission.

Once at the AnnualCreditReport website, enter your state and fill out a form. You need your birthdate and social security number. Then you have an option of which company you would like to get a report from. Just pick one, it’s like Coke and Pepsi, they are very much alike. I selected TransUnion. At that website I set up an account with a password. The tricky part of this process is how the company asks questions to confirm you are who you say you are. You have to answer questions based upon past addresses or employers, or imput your exact payment amounts from creditors. It’s a good way to keep someone who has gotten your birthdate and social security number from finding out more info about you. Once through this, you have to keep saying “no, thanks” to offers of newletters or services you pay for. (A Debt Analysis costs $5.95, who knows what that is). Then, you can view and print your report. It’s really not so hard. You can return to the AnnualCreditReport website and select another company, or just logout and call it a day.

If you discover something negative on your report, the website details the correction process. The FTC has an excellent website with information on repairing your credit.

It’s hard to remember a once-a-year time to do this. This month, around the time you prepare your taxes, might be a good choice. Checking your credit report is much less painful than paying taxes.

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 1:26 pm and is filed under House of Credit and Debit Cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.