How Can I Get More Than One Free Consumer Report in One Year?

Part of staying financially healthy includes monitoring your credit throughout the year. Enrolling in a credit monitoring service is a convenient and easy way to stay on top of your credit, but will most likely require a monthly fee. If you can remember to manually pull your credit reports thoughout the year and don't mind investing a little time and energy, you can order your credit reports free throughout the year from AnnualCreditReport.com.

AnnualCreditReport.com is the centralized website that allows you to access your government-granted free credit reports. You can order three credit reports each year – one from each of the three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. But, instead of ordering all three of these credit reports at one time, you can order them four months apart to watching your credit the entire year. For example, order your Equifax credit report in January, Experian in May, TransUnion in September, and then start over with Equifax the next January. Remember that this approach won't give you continuous access to all three of your reports. If there is fraudulent activity listed on your TransUnion report but not your Equifax report, for instance, you might not learn about it for months. That time lapse can make recovering for identity theft much harder, all the while hurting your credit score that much more. Also, AnnualCreditReport.com does not provide you with your credit scores for free.

There are other places on the internet to get free credit reports and even free credit scores. Sites like SpendOnLife.com, freecreditreport.com, and MyFICO.com, offer free credit reports and scores if you sign up for a trial subscription with their credit monitoring service. If you don't want to become a member of a credit monitoring service, you can cancel the subscription before the trial period ends to avoid any charge to your credit card.

Federal law allows you to receive a free credit report in a few other instances. You can get a free credit report when you’ve been denied for products or services because of information in your credit report, when you’re looking for a job, if you suspect you’ve been a victim of identity theft, or you receive government assistance. Write directly to the credit bureaus to receive these free credit reports.

Related links:

What is a Consumer Credit Report?

Can Credit Monitoring Prevent Identity Theft?