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Verify Credit Record

If you're doing a good job with your credit, the last thing you want to have happen is to be punished for an administrative mistake that somebody else made.  To make sure this doesn't happen to you, the first thing to do is to check your credit record to see if it has any mistakes.

You've all seen the advertising for paid credit reports that have the word "free" in them, but the U.S. government requires all of the major credit bureaus to provide you with a truly zero-cost credit report once each year.  To access your reports, go to the government's site, which will then lead you to the no-cost request site within each of the major bureaus.  You can also go directly to the credit bureaus, but it is more difficult to navigate within them to find the non-paid services.

If you find any inaccuracies in your record, you can make a correction request directly on the online reports you access.  If you do this, you will be able to access your record again to verify that the correction was made at no charge.  Also, you can also stagger your requests to be from one of the 3 bureaus every 4 months so that you get 3 annual checks on your record for free, instead of requesting your record from all 3 bureaus at once.

Certainly, if you want to see your credit score, you can get that through the bureaus.  A good rule of thumb is to get your credit score above 700 and to keep it there.

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