Keep An Eye On Your Credit: How Often Should You Review Your Credit Report?

There is no doubt that your credit report contains a lot of information that can have a direct impact on your lifestyle. It is also true that other people are reviewing your credit file and making judgments about you and your ability to repay. What do they see? Should you be at all concerned about the information is included in your credit report? You should be very concerned with the information included in your credit report because it has a direct impact on your life. The information on your credit report can break you or make you and it does not go away overnight.

Regularly reviewing your credit report is not only a great way to keep tabs on how well you are doing financially; it is also a great way to protect yourself from identity theft and credit reporting errors. Did you know that 25% of credit reports contain errors that are serious enough to cause a denial of credit? Keep in mind that these are just the serious errors. More than three quarters of credit reports contain errors due to typing mistakes, misinformation and human error.

Credit reporting agencies know that their system is not fool proof, so they have set in place avenues that people can use to have incorrect information removed from their credit report. But you can not have information removed if you do not know it is there in the first place.

Most financial advisers recommend that you should review your credit report every 90 days or four times per year. You are entitled to one free credit report from each of the three major reporting bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, each year. So, that is three out of four, right? Not exactly.

You see not all lenders report to all agencies. This means that your report from Experian could look completely different from a report issued by Equifax. One report might contain errors while the other is spot on. The only way to know for sure is to pull all three reports and compare them at the same time. This should be done every 90 days.

If you absolutely cannot afford to purchase reports from the agencies three times a year, you can stagger your free credit reports throughout the year. Keep in mind, though, that you may not be seeing the whole picture.

How much do credit reports cost? Depending on the bureau, you can be charged up to $10.50 for your credit report. So you are looking at roughly $90 a year to keep tabs on your credit. Remember; these fees do not include your credit score. You will also NOT be supplied a credit score along with your free reports. If you want to know your credit score, you can request it but it will cost you about $5 to $7.

Ninety dollars a year may sound steep, but not knowing could be costing you much more. You could be overpaying thousands of dollars in interest payments each year because of something on your credit report that you do not know about.