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Time to pull your annual free credit report

WHAT'S ON YOUR CREDIT REPORT??

How to pull your ‘FREE' annual credit reports:

Go to http://www.annualcreditreport.com/
Click on the drop down menu for which State you are in.
Hit the 'GO' button and start filling out info.
The http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ site will always be your base site.
There will be a link on each consecutive page that will take you back to http://www.annualcreditreport.com/.
You will go through a series of forms filling out data and as you get to each Bureaus site: Experian, Equifax & TransUnion

You will be asked different information before they will show your credit report.

They do this to insure ONLY YOU can access your report!

Hints & Tips

You will be asked if you want to 'see your score' for a nominal fee of about $7 'per bureau'.

I recommend you buy at least one score, however, keep in mind there are several different 'credit scoring models' and the score you see will not necessarily be the score the mortgage lender sees. In fact, the score you see is usually quite a bit higher than the score I will see.
One additional caution on the scores.
If you do choose to get your score, you MUST print that out right then and there.
You will NOT get another chance to view that score & you will not get to go back to that site later and see the score again.

One of my favorite aspects of this site is that you can dispute any item you don't agree with.
It's the FASTEST way to have the credit bureaus help the consumer and have a resolved response within 30 days.
DISPUTE, DISPUTE, DISPUTE!

If your score is lower then 680; give me a jingle or an e-mail and we will talk about it.

This is a one-time per year service, take advantage of it!!

Posted by Candace Pinaud on 01/11/2008 08:14 AM

Comments (2)

credit score, identity theft, security, mortgage, buying, credit repair, credit

2 Comments on Time to pull your annual free credit report

This is great advice that I give to all of my clients, friends, and family. Thanks for getting it out there where everyone can find it, Candace! Too many folks don't realize there actually is a way to get a genuinely free report and end up at one of those sites that requires you to sign up for monthly credit monitoring (for a monthly fee, of course) in order to get your "free" report.

Although obviously not all companies report to all 3 bureaus and the scores won't be identical, I always recommend pulling one bureau every 4 months for your own credit monitoring rather than pulling all 3 once per year. Since you are entitled to one free report from each bureau per year, this allows you to monitor your credit periodically throughout the year rather than just once a year. Of course, if you find an error that needs to be disputed on the first one you pull, you'll want to pull the other two at that time as well.

01/11/2008 12:08 PM

by Beth Rodland (CitiFinancial)

Good advice, Candace ! How do you like the commercial with the little guy singing in the pizza place? My kids all sing it so it must be having an effect. Everyone should know their credit score yearly, it is important to know what is on there. One of my cards got sold from mbna to boa and when they transferred to that company, it showed a balance on it. Fact of the matter was I had paid it off and had 0 balance on both cards. But, it looked like I still had the one of mbna. I called BOA and they got rid of it.

01/11/2008 04:41 PM

by Missy Caulk-Ann Arbor- Realtor(R)- Ann Arbor Real Estate (Keller Williams-Ann Arbor)

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