With credit being such an integral part of anyone’s finances, knowing what is on your credit report is key. Whether you are about to make a large purchase on cred (house, car, etc.) or not, you should be making sure that your credit report is accurate and true.
There is a great new system in place that allows you to keep tabs on your credit reports for free. Depending on where you live in the United States, this may be available for you now or by the end of the year. AnnualCreditReport.com allows you to pull your credit report from the big 3 agencies once every year. You can pull them all at once or each one at a separate time. I would highly recommend making this a planned part of your year. Every four months (I’d recommend marking your calendar on Jan 1, May 1, and Sept 1) access the site and pull your report from a different agency. This allows you to keep close tabs on your report for free. Note that you will not receive a credit score with the report (you can purchase these separately), but you will see all of your open accounts and credit lines that have been extended to you.
When I went through the process the beginning of this month, I had recently changed addresses. This can sometimes cause your reports to be inaccessible online since they cannot match your address. You may want to use your previuos address in that case to access your reports without a phone call.