Every citizen should pull out their latest credit copy and review it at least once a year. If you do this, you will be keeping a track of your personal financial situation and in charge of your credit. It will be a rewarding experience to have your credit in full control. You will be able to make better decisions regarding your finance and if you feel the need to buy a home or a car sometime in the future, you will get to know the exact picture of your financial situation after reviewing your credit copy. You will also come to know if someone is trying to open unauthorized accounts using your identity.

Every US citizen is entitled to get a free credit report from each of the three national bureaus once a year. You don’t have to subscribe for anything to get the free copy once a year. There are many ways to get your free credit copy from different companies without having to sign up for the services offered by them. Since there are many kinds of scams, always be very careful with your personal information when you are trying to retrieve it from the internet.

There are many reasons to get a credit report at least once a year. The main reason is to make sure that no one is using your identity and opening fraudulent accounts in your name. Unfortunately, we are living in such a world where no one is safe. People can take out loans in our names and leave us with huge debts that we were never aware of. If you review your credit report regularly, this situation may not arise and your credit will never be ruined because of this reason.

Another reason why you should be reviewing your credit copy is to stay in control of your credit and finances. If you are in total control, you should not have any problems in getting the best deals from your future lenders. They will be quoting you the lowest interest rates and consider you a nominal risk to their finance. You should know what is on your credit report before you shop with different lenders for any type of loan or financing.

There are other ways to be eligible for a free credit report if you have already requested it once in a year. Due to some reasons, if you have been denied new credit, or if you are applying for a new job, you can ask the lender to get a credit report for you. He will show you your credit copy without charging any fee. You have these rights under the federal laws.

You are entitled to get a free credit copy from each of the three bureaus but you don’t have to necessarily pull it from all the agencies at the same time. The credit reporting agencies don’t share information between them. They have their own sources to collect information about you. That’s why the records with one bureau will not be exactly the same as the other one.

It is a very good idea to get your credit report once a year. This will allow you to monitor your credit history and give you a good idea whether you are in a situation to get a good job or loan/credit offers. If you are not pro-active, you might find yourself in troubles and in a situation that was never expected by you. Besides, monitoring your credit is a good way to safe guard yourself against identity theft.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Credit, Credit Repair. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.