Taxation & Estate Planning

Credit Reports

By Joel A. Schoenmeyer

I'm not a financial planner by any stretch of the imagination, but I occasionally come across financial planning tips that might be helpful. So I'm starting a new category of posts, with this one.

Have you seen the commercials for annual credit reports? The ones with the guy who sings a song about how he wishes he'd looked at his credit report before he lost all his cash and got stuck in a dead-end job? Unless you've been in a coma, you probably have. And if you've been paying attention, you know that the commercials offer a "free" report only if you enroll in something (NOT for free) called Triple Advantage, which allegedly monitors your credit for problems.

There's an easier way to get a credit report for free, without any strings. It involves going to this website. You are actually entitled to a free credit report each year from each of the three nationwide credit reporting agencies (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax), and can get the reports through this site. Maybe you already knew this, but...

The tip I recently got is: go in and order a report (for you, or one for each of you and your spouse) every four months. So...

Today (2/24/2010): order Experian report(s)
6/24/2010: order TransUnion report(s)
10/24/2010: order Equifax report(s)
2/25/2011: order Experian report(s) as the cycle starts again

This way, you can monitor differences between the agencies AND monitor your credit over time. And, of course, it's free. (Let me stress that it's free only in a cash sense -- you still need to spend the time reviewing the reports and making corrections and having "old" or incorrect credit removed).

Full post as published by Death and Taxes Blog on February 24, 2010 (boomark / email).