Originally posted by Blk560:
Originally posted by KokoMerkin:
He should check his credit. It's cheap and will give him a good picture of what he needs to accomplish.



Actually, it's free, no? Under FCRA, he and the rest of us are entitled to three per year at no charge...one from each of the three national reporting agencies (TransUnion, Experian, Equifax). IIRC, you won't get a free BEACON score, but it's available for a small fee with your free report.



Yeah, it's free for the basic overview thing. But, like you said, it doesn't include the score. I believe it also doesn't include things like inquiries or public records, or provide suggestions on what in your report is causing you score to be lower and how to improve it, or allow you the opportunity to put in your own comments.

Personally, I pay Experian a small fee, I think it's like $8/month, and I can get all the free credit reports I want. So I check it at the end of every month. And they also do things like immediately send you alerts when there's new inquiries on the account or there's in significant changes in the status of your accounts. That way, at best, there's only a day between someone applying for a card in my name and when I know about it, as opposed to possibly months if you check your credit report "only" every few months.

It's a small amount for peace-of-mind. And, just to be sure, I individually pull the other reporting agencies reports every quarter or so.

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