mrdeeno

I just realized last night how much my credit is actually worth to me and I should spend a little to protect it, because no matter how careful someone is concerning their finances and credit, there is always a chance that either someone intentionally does something that hurts your credit/finances (ID theft) or a simple mistake by a creditor can result in your credit receiving a black eye (someone processing a payment applies your payment to someone else's account or a collections company is going after someone with the same name as you and uses your SS number).

I hear that the service offered by freecreditreport.com sucks. What does anyone here use? Does anyone use any program offered through their credit card company?

fuzzy02CLS

iTrader: (2)

You can get a free report each year from all 3 credit companies.
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

Washington mutual CC has a free monthly reporting. It gives your FICO score & # of accounts open/closed. But it's only from 1 credit bureau. I have that.
Really if your on top of it, it's not hard to do yourself. I've never had any sort of problem. I always know what I have.

But whatever service you get make sure they do it from all 3 credit bureau's.

mrdeeno

Around tax-time, I get my credit report every year (I pay the $39.99 or whatever to get all 3 at once). But even if I did it 3 times a year, that still leaves a lot of opportunity for something to happen, which is why i want to hook up with a monitoring service that would notify me as soon as something changes (like applying for a new card or loan).

I was thinking about how good my credit is and the potential i have to use it for investment purposes, and realized it would take 1 minor thing to happen for me to be screwed, so that little something a month to monitor my credit is worth more than the risk of being screwed.