Financial Reflections

I’m a skeptic.  When I first heard I could get my credit report free annually, and get it online, I was sure there was a catch.  I’ve heard too much about scams online involving idenity theft and who knows what else.  But this time I heard the claim, it was from two sources that I trust so I investigated further.

Sure enough, I was able to get my credit report online, get it for free and best of all I can do it every year.  You can, too.  Here’s how.

I have to credit Dave Ramsey with mentioning how I can get my free annual credit report on his radio show.  I followed that up with a check of Clark Howard’s website.  It turns out that getting your free annual credit report is the result of a new law that makes this possible for all Americans.

Here’s the steps:

1. Go to AnnualCreditReport.com Be sure to spell it right - there are two “n”s in Annual.
2. Enter your personal data.  The site is secured, so your data will be encrypted.
3. Follow the instructions to get your reports from each of the three credit agencies.  The navigagtion was a little tricky.  I had to use links to go back to the annual credit report site and on to the next agency.
4. You don’t need to buy any of the extra services they might offer.  Just decline anything you don’t want and you can get your reports for free.
5. Each agency will have different ways to verify your identity, such as a multiple choice question about what an old address was.  If you are like me, you won’t remember all of that, so you may need to find old data to answer the questions.
6. Each site should give you the option to print out the report.  I chose that, so I could keep it on file for the next year.

That’s it!  I plan on doing this every year.  In spite of what was sometimes difficult site navigation, I managed to get through it all.