Free Finance Tools - Part 2: AnnualCreditReport.com

Another cause for people filing personal bankruptcy is identity theft. Most people who are victims of identity theft don’t know about it until all of their credit has been maxed out by some criminal. Did you know however that you are entitled to a free copy of your credit report once a year by all 3 major credit bureaus?

AnnualCreditReport.com is the site that lets you get your credit report for free. Don’t get fooled by other sites that advertises free credit reports because they’ll usually try to get you to buy something. Remember, you are entitled by law, to one free credit report to each of the 3 credit agencies.

In order to maximize the use of the free credit reports, you should be looking at one credit report every 4 months so that by the end of the year, you would’ve used up all of your free reports for the year and you’ll also be consistently monitoring your credit report for fraudulent charges.

If you feel you need added security, you can ask each of the credit bureaus to either put a “credit alert” or “credit freeze” on your reports so that any new activity on the reports, the agencies must contact you before extending credit.