Free Annual Credit Reports — No Credit Card Required

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By law, you have the right to receive a free credit report every 12 months from each of the 3 major credit reporting agencies:  Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.

These 3 agencies created the website AnnualCreditReport.com to make it easy for you to request your free annual credit reports, and are the only service authorized by them.  You can request your report online, by phone, or by mail.  If you request your report online at AnnualCreditReport.com, you will be able to see it immediately upon verifying your identity.   If you request it by phone or mail, it will take about 15 days.

There are other services, also, which offer you a free credit report.  However, you will find that most of these companies require you to sign up for their credit monitoring service in order to get your free report.  So, in that case, your credit report isn’t really free, is it?  Even if you get a free trial of their service, and cancel before the trial is over, you still had to give them your credit card info.

Now I’m not saying that these credit monitoring services are a bad thing.  In fact, monitoring your credit reports on a frequent basis can be very valuable indeed.  However, if you’re just wanting to get your free credit report, then AnnualCreditReport.com is where you can get it without having to sign up for extra services.

You can choose whether you want to get your report from all three credit reporting agencies at the same time, or spread it out over the year.  If you get all three at the same time, then you can do that once every 12 months.  If you want to spread it out, then request your credit report from one of the three agencies every four months.  Which way is best?  It’s really up to you.  Although all 3 have a lot of the same data, you’ll find that there are differences, too.  The agencies don’t share the info with each other to make sure they all have the same info.

There are many reasons why you should get your free credit report each year, and make sure it is accurate.  Doing so could save you thousands of dollars and a lot of time and frustration trying to correct errors long after the fact.

For some stories of what can happen if you don’t, be sure to see my next post about credit report errors and how they can affect your life.

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