Free credit reports

We love earning as much as we love spending. Today many of us are owners of multiple credit cards and we spend randomly buying things, which we need and most of the time, we do not need. Then there are debts we manage from home loans, auto loans, personal loans and sometimes payday loans too. How are we managing our money? After repaying our loans and mortgages, are we still creditworthy? To know our financial status, there is no alternative to credit reports, which are generated by the financial agencies that are monitoring all our credit activities. According to law instituted in September 2005, every citizen of this country is entitled to a free credit report once a year. However, it is also possible to obtain free credit reports from agencies and information about such agencies is available on the Internet. Be that as it may, you must understand the importance of free credit reports, as it is the only document that decides your financial status and your creditworthiness. For instance, free credit report would contain information on the following aspects:

• Personal details as your name, age, sex, address, social security number and your marital status.
• Details of your credit history, including your credit card expenditure, bank account details, current balance and also history of loans taken by you.
• All information regarding public information related to your financial history like bankruptcy cases, CCJ regarding financial judgments, arrears, tax defaults, tax liens, etc.
• It would also contain details of any inquiries made by any third party, regarding your credit score or credit history.

So if you are planning to take a loan, but a car or a house or even applying for a credit card, the merchant or lending company may ask to see the credit report. When you have a free credit report, you could go to the loan market more comfortably, as the report contains details whether you are creditworthy or not. However, the bad news is that often, free credit reports are inaccurate. So, you need to get it properly up-dated, remove errors and include recent credit transactions in it, which is often missing. The free credit report also allows you to track any identity theft, where someone else may have borrowed huge sums of money in your name leaving you cheated and bankrupt. So it is always wise to check your free credit report to detect any anomalies and report immediately and get all the errors rectified. There are many agencies who offer these free credit reports online. In case anyone is asking for private information like credit card numbers etc., through mail, be cautious about such agencies. Also look out for factors like whether they are offering any time-bound facilities. You could also get your free credit report at www.AnnualCreditReport.com, as this is the only official site that helps consumers to obtain their annual free credit report.