There isn't much big news to report from the industry lately, but in the interest of ending the blog-neglect around here, I want to offer some advice about annualcredireport.com.
You really should be checking your credit report there annually; if you got with the program early, you would have already gotten two annual credit reports, and will soon visit the site for you third free annual report.
(That's over-simplifying, of course; you can go once per year for each of your three credit reports, and the smart thing to do is spread those requests throughout the year. So you might have gotten your free credit report half a dozen times already.)
But here's my caution: when you use the site to request your free annual credit report, DON'T pay for your credit score as well. If you've gone the annualcreditreport.com route, the bureaus will sell you their useless FAKO scores. If you want a score that will be accurate and actually mean something in the lending community, make sure you're getting a genuine FICO score and not the bureaus' useless Vantage score.
Many people still don't know the risk involved by not paying attention to their credit reports. This is one of those things you just have to do these days. Sure it's a bit tedious or expensive or whatevver but an ounce of prevention is woth a pound of cure.
Posted by: LifeLock Jeff | March 27, 2009 at 09:55 AM