Thursday thoughts: Have you checked your credit report lately?

Posted: March 8, 2012

Did you know that you can check your credit report for FREE every year? If you haven't been keeping tabs on what your credit report shows, here's how you can check it at no cost! Having a good credit score and an accurate credit report are important if you plan to borrow money in the future. If you are going to buy a car, purchase a home, rent an apartment or apply for a credit card, lenders will look at your credit report to help them determine if you are good credit risk.

With the enormous amount of identity theft consumers have experienced, it's a good idea to check your credit report to make sure all the information is correct. I was at the bank the other day and the bank employee told me that her identity had been stolen months earlier and it was causing a great deal of chaos in her financial world.

Click HERE to go to annualcreditreport.com to check your credit history for free. You can check your report once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

Click HERE to read a recent article from Clark Howard on a free credit check site that also gives you a (non-FICO) credit score for free.

If you find any issues with your report, get them fixed right away. For some helpful tips from Bankrate.com on fixing credit report errors, click HERE.

Have any of you been a victim of identity theft? How long did it take to get things back in order? Any suggestions for the rest of us?

7 Comments

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I have a great deal with my Chase Visa card account. They send me alerts any time there is a change or inquiry to my credit, as well as potential fraud alerts. I can log in to my account any day and see my full credit report, alerts, and scores. I sleep better knowing I have this protection and info at my finger tips. For $7.00 a month it's a great value.

tdebord
March 9, 2012 1:32 p.m.

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Shay1 the only problem with staggering the free credit reports is they do not share information with each other. My husband just learn of a medical bill that was shown as in collections with transunion that did not show on equifax or experian. He did dispute the information, as he does not have any medical bills or anything in collections and it was removed in less than 24hrs.

lorawatson
March 8, 2012 4:41 p.m.

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I agree with shay also. We cannot get free credit scores because we have both of our credit reports frozen. We used to have a credit card that gave us our number for free, It was pretty cool but they stopped this.

gailygoo
March 8, 2012 3:56 p.m.

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I do what shay1 does. I haven't had any problems as of yet (other than remembering to do it 4 months from now), but it's better to check periodically so you can catch anything fishy early.

lcsYeah
March 8, 2012 3:34 p.m.

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Banks offer credit monitoring pretty cheaply. I think it is worth the investment, as ID theft is rampant these days. Here is an easy way to cover the cost of credit monitoring at BB&T:

If you upgrade your checking account to the Plus Package, you can send in $100 worth of receipts each quarter to get a $10 rebate check. You can use this to cover both the fee of the Plus Package upgrade AND 24/7 credit monitoring service. When you sign up for credit monitoring, you can pull your credit report for free once per quarter. My relationship banker gave me all these tips last time I went to see her.

lucasd06
March 8, 2012 3:28 p.m.

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It's a shame the feds did not write into the free credit report law that it had to include your actual 'score' - so these companies all charge for it :(

Nancy
March 8, 2012 3:21 p.m.

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To be even more of a saver...check one credit bureau every 4 months...that way you can be on top of identity theft every few months. "Generally" the info on the reports is the same...I say "generally" so doing 1 bureau every 4 months will allow you to stretch the free annual report.

shay1
March 8, 2012 3:18 p.m.

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Thursday thoughts: Have you checked your credit report lately?

7 Comments

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