Check Your Credit History

Your credit history not only affects how much you pay in interest on credit cards, home loans, car loans, etc. (or even if you can get a loan) but it can also affect how much you pay for insurance and can even affect you getting a job. [1]

You can get a free credit report (but not score) three times a year (if you do things just right) by visiting http://annualcreditreport.com. The trick is to get a report from just one of the three credit reporting agencies (TransUnion, Experian, EquiFax) and keep track of which you checked and when. Then every four months, get a report from the agency that you haven't gotten a report from in the last year. This will allow you to regularly look at what is being reported about you.

It can be a little tricky getting your report. You'll be clicking a lot of "No Thanks, just the free report" links and buttons. They are trying to sell you all sorts of other services. The only service I would use of theirs is buying my credit score. Every year I view my credit score from a different agency, just to see where I stand. Once you get the report, get a "printable" version and print it out, save the HTML file or print it to a PDF (if on a Mac). That way you can compare your credit report with the report from the other agencies.

Once you get the report, you want to make sure that everything on it is accurate. Things to watch out for are accounts that you do not have (possible identity theft) or late payments (company delayed applying payments). [2] Usually if there are collections on your report, you already know about it because someone has called you to harass you about it.

So it might be a good idea to just put on your calendar to check your credit report in January, May and September (New Years, School Out, School Starting).