Online Credit Agencies?

Good or bad: the "free" credit reports?

Free credit report....Free Score.... are these sites worth the money we are charged to monitor our credit? Well, in my opinion...NO!

First of all, the credit report or the score is not Free through these plans. In order to get the first report for free, you must sign up for a monthly credit monitoring service. The cost for this service is $19.95 per month or so, which equals just under $240 per year. My main challenge with these services is that the credit report is available to everyone in the U.S. for FREE. Why pay $240 per year for something you can get for free? Seems like a bad deal to me.

It is a great deal for the credit bureaus that sell the service. In fact, the quirky and creative advertisements are fun to watch and peek our interest. It is nearly impossible to visit a website and not see some type of Credit Score click ad. It is just as difficult to watch 1 hour of television that doesn't have at least one Free Credit Score ad.

What I recommend is to visit the website: www.annualcreditreport.com

This site is available to everyone and each of us are entitled to pull a free report from each of the three credit bureaus every year. Visit this site three times in the next year. In month visit and order the Free report from Equifax. In month five order the Free report from Experian. Lastly in month nine, order the Free report from Trans Union. The following year you start over again with Equifax and so on.

You just saved $240 and obtained the same information that you would have received through a credit monitoring service. You can then review the information for errors, inquiries, payment history, etc. If you need help understanding the information, I can help you with a short consultation.

This free program does not provide the score. If you must know your score....then I recommend that the next time you borrow money from your bank, car loan, mortgage...ask the loan officer, "what was my score?". They will tell you and now you know.

Why pay $240 per year for what you can get for free


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