Get Your Free Credit Check Every Year

There are some specific times when you should get your credit check and did you know that you are entitled to a free credit check each year? By federal mandate, beginning in 2005, a free credit check is available to any individual who applies for one. To understand why this is important, briefly consider the way credit reports are filed and why you would want to seek a free credit check. Your credit report is compiled and maintained as a joint effort between every creditor you deal with and three major credit compiling companies in the United States. All have people working on the data entry portion of this process and as such, all are subject to errors. That’s one reason you should seek out your free credit check every year. If you do find errors, you’re entitled to request that the company providing the information prove their claims. If the claims are not proven, the entries are to be removed from your credit history. You should also seek out your free credit check if you are considering applying for a major loan or other credit opportunity. The reason? If a potential creditor gets your information and it shows that you are not credit worthy, it greatly impacts the way you are seen by that creditor. Even if the problem

is an error, you’ve made a poor first impression that will be difficult to get past. And if the poor credit history is valid, you need to be able to explain any situations that led to those negative entries. By the same token, you don’t want to start explaining away problems that don’t even exist – remember that some companies simply don’t report either good or bad credit practices and you might be opening the door for questions that shouldn’t even be opened. So before you assume that your credit is great or that a potential creditor is simply going to take a look at your credit history and turn you down, get your free credit report and see for yourself what does and doesn’t appear.