With identity theft and unstable financial times so prevalent these days, it’s a good idea to regularly review your credit reports so you can find out what’s on it and if there are any mistakes you would want to contest.
Basically you can get your free annual credit report in two ways. First, the completely free, government mandated way is to visit annualcreditreport.com where you are entitled to get a free credit report annually, from each of the big 3 credit bureaus. If you want the FICO score, you would have the opportunity to pay for it during check out. It’s not expensive. Last I checked it was about $10-$15 or so.
Another is to take a trial membership with one of those credit monitoring services, and if you like the on-going protection, it costs a typical fee of $20 or so per month until you cancel. Now the cool thing is if you don’t like or want the service within the trial period, you pay nothing, and you get your three credit reports AND the FICO score for free. A bit more hassle but you get everything free if you find their service not a good fit for you.
Now, whichever way you do it, go out there and get your credit reports for this year!