6 Places Where You Can Find Out your Credit Score for FREE
My wife was a Bank Teller for a few years and I have to tell you that’s really a more difficult job than many people would think. There is a lot of responsibility for a great deal of money and it requires that workers pay very close attention to detail, much like a store clerk by with magnified amounts of dollars. She has shared stories with me of some rather financially well-off customers crying poverty and those customers that habitually bounce checks that ask for a “one time courtesy waive” of the bank fees. I would not be good in that position. It’s not that I’m insensitive… I just don’t care!
But I was introduced to a man who was a pretty successful business owner in the city, Jason, several years who had been denied for a personal loan because of his poor credit rating. He was confused because he was not really in THAT bad of shape. My wife asked if he had seen his credit reports and he replied with a blank stare, which answered her question. She suggested that he contact me for some instruction and advice, which he was over-the-top excited to do. We were able to sit together one evening to get one of the three credit reports online, FREE, which consumers are able to do. Unlike even the individual credit bureaus, the annual credit report dot com web site, has no optional credit monitoring service or trial offer.
I personally believe that just choosing one of the three credit bureau agencies every four months is the best way to stagger the timing for each to be annual for free AND allow for more frequent self-monitoring of changes and/or errors. The key word, and the reason for this post is that… errors!
Here are six places to get your credit score for FREE
Please note some are only free for the trial period and you will need to cancel when the 14 days are up.
Jason’s credit report showed several errors from the credit bureau that had confused his name with another person holding the same (common) name. And if you believe that was a “one-off” situation, you may want to know “the rest of the story.” The reason that my wife suggested that Jason and I talk was because I was able to help her, my step son and a few other people review and challenge errors made by the credit reporting bureaus.
When purchasing our condo before we were married, my wife’s credit report showed a birth year of 1919 instead of her, undisclosed, actual year of birth. My step son’s credit was “dinged” because of late payments on various credit cards, many that were showing as opened the year that he was two years old. Another friend’s outstanding mortgage of $100,000 was recorded as $1,000,000. So, Jason’s errors were data errors that we were able to challenge and change.
Knowledge is Power!
Leave a Reply