For those of you who are in debt, have bad renter’s history, or have outstanding unpaid bills, the chances of you having a difficult time making purchases such as a home or car are very high. You may be unqualified to make these purchases altogether, or may be subject to pay outrageous deposit fees and high interest rates to obtain them. In addition, you may even struggle qualifying for credit cards and cell phone plans. Simply put, bad credit can affect your life a great deal and can cost you tons of unnecessary money.
But how do you know if your have good credit or bad credit so that you can prepare accordingly? You’ll need to acquire a copy of your credit report of course. By law, consumers are entitled to three free credit reports a year, one from each of the three leading crediting bureaus — TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. Do not be fooled by Web sites that promise free online credit reports. Only annualcreditreport.com is allowed to fill e-orders for free.
However, if you’ve happened to exhaust all three free credit reports already and you are uncertain whether you’ll actually qualify for that new house/apartment that you want for example, you should definitely order another credit report before shelling out any money for the application fee and other expenses — you can find yourself in a huge financial hole if you keep applying everywhere and continue to get rejected. That’s money just flushed down the drain. While additional credit reports do cost money, there are some agencies that offer special discounted rates so you don’t have to break the bank just to check your credit report and or score. That said, to learn some of the cheaper agencies, continue reading below.
FreeCreditReport.com
The word “free” might be explicitly in the domain name but nothing is free about doing business with this service. You can get a credit report for “almost free” though. To order a single credit report all you have to do is pay a buck. There are strings attached if you read the fine print however—consumers are required to submit their credit card information in order to gain access to an additional Experian credit report. If you don’t cancel your membership within a week of requesting your dollar credit report however, your credit card will automatically be charged $14.95 and will continue to do so each month unless you officially
cancel.
myFICO.com
If you’re not sure what your FICO credit report is, it’s one of the more popular credit reports that lenders and leasers use to determine your eligibility since it analyzes five key areas, including payment history and new credit. While some FICO subscription packages can cost as much as $49.95 a month, luckily you can snag one for free by using a 10-day trial subscription to Score Watch, a credit score monitoring agency. You have to make sure you cancel your subscription in due time however if you don’t want your card to be charged $15 every month. Thankfully the service isn’t sneaky about it though. You should receive a three days notice via email when your free trial is about to expire as a reminder.
Quizzle.com
Lastly, you can get both your credit score and credit report for free if you register with this service. It may sound too good to be true but you can in fact get up to two credit reports/credit scores a year. As a bonus, you don’t even need to enter sensitive information like your credit card number or social security number (which most scammers generally ask for). All you need is your name and date of birth and you’re all set. And no, you don’t need to cancel a trial subscription to gain access to an Experian credit report.
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