In addition to monitoring your personal savings account and your checking account, another important financial matter that you should consider monitoring is your personal credit report. As economic times have become more unpredictable, it is very important that you maintain a good credit standing so that lending institutions will readily lend you money when a need arises. One way of doing this is to access free personal credit reports either through government-sanctioned agencies (FTC) and consumer-reporting companies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) that provide free personal credit reports.
Credit reports are documents that contain four types of information about you, which are relevant to lenders. These include your identity, your credit history, your public records, and other information such as new debts. A credit score is also included in this report; this score is a three-digit number that can determine your credit worthiness. A high score means that you have good credit and this may mean lower interest rates and better terms for your loan. This free credit report is supposed to be provided to you every twelve months, however a system is being put in place by the Federal Government wherein you can access these reports on a quarterly basis. These steps further strengthen the implementation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which mandates that credit reports should annually be given to people who request them free of charge from the various sanctioned agencies.
You can access these reports by going directly to the website (www.annualcreditreport.com) maintained by the sanctioned agencies, by calling a hotline number 1-877-322-8228, or by sending a request through the mail and mailing it to the Annual Credit Report Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.
In these unpredictable times, it is always a good idea to be prepared when certain events dictate that you borrow money from lending institutions to fulfill in your financial needs. Monitoring your credit reports and your credit score will not only help you be a good borrower, but more importantly, it can help you get more loans in the future as the need arises.
