Thursday, August 25, 2005

Free Credit Reports

Starting next week (September 1st) a new federal law goes into affect giving every American the right to get a free credit report once a year from the three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and Transunion.

This will help curb identification theft, as you can see if someone is using your I.D. To get your free credit report go to www.annualcreditreport.com, or call 877-322-8228. To better monitor your credit reports ask for them every four months, i.e., Equifax in January, Experian in May, and Transunion in September.

If you go directly to the credit bureaus, they may try to sell you their credit monitoring serives, which vary from $5 to $10 a month. You have to decide for yourself whether it's worth it or not.

Take note of www.annualcreditreport.com, because if you Google "free credit report," all kinds of sites will come up that will try to lure you in to spending money, as all you want to really do is take advantage of the new law giving you a free annual credit report from each of the main reporting bureaus.

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