Under Federal law, you have the right to receive a copy of your credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus, every 12 months. The long way to go about getting those is by contacting each of the bureaus individually and going through the various request processes.
Another, highly advertised way is to use the service provided by www.freecreditreport.com (baby). When you use their service to order your credit report, you are signing up for their credit report monitoring services and will be charged the going rate (currently $14.95 a month). You do have a trial/cancellation period so be sure to cancel in time if it is not your intention to utilize their ongoing services.
The most convenient way to truly get your free, no obligation, 3 bureau report is to go to www.annualcreditreport.com.
Give it a try and stay in the know about your credit.
Update: Great comment sent to me by a reader!
ReplyDelete"Definitely go the annualcreditreport direction. My wife signed up for Free Credit Report and didn't cancel in time. Once I saw the charges I called to cancel. Despite saying they were cancelling it immediately, they continued to charge for almost a year. We had to call numerous times.
Annual Credit Report not only lets you do everything that Free Credit Report does, but you are still able to challenge items in your report for free. The only thing you can't do for free (which you really can't anywhere) is get your actual credit score. But IMO it's better to pay a one-time fee to get it than to pay a omnthly subscription fee for something that doesn't change monthly.
Oh, and for anyone who's gotten this far: CHALLENGE EVERYTHIGN on your credit report - even if it truly is your debt. If the companies don't respond within 30 days with justification as to why it is on your credit report then it gets expunged, even if the debt is valid. And depending on your state you might be eligible for 2 free looks at yoru credit report a year."