Order a Free Annual Credit Report

Please be sure to order a free credit report each year.

www.annualcreditreport.com

Federal Trade Commission
www.ftc.gov

Don't be surprised how different your 3 credit reports may appear.
There are 3 major companies - Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

If you see any errors, you need to contest them.

I personally had a negative entry on my report and I could not determine who the creditor was and I suspected it was an error. It took several attempts, but I was able to finally get it removed from my report. There were also duplicate entries of my law school loan so it appeared that I owed much more money than I actually owed. Again, I was able to get the duplicates off after writing the credit bureaus several times. I did not take "no" as an answer. I had my paperwork to show that I only had one student loan.

A relative ran her report and found many errors since she has a very common name. I helped her fill out the forms and all of the incorrect information was removed on our first attempt. She thought I was a miracle worker. It enabled her to get a car loan at a very low interest rate with a higher credit rating.

You do not need to hire a company to help you. You can do it yourself for free. Now most of it can be done via the internet. I highly recommend that you make a copy of each page if you do the forms on the internet.