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 Monitoring and understanding the information in your credit file is very important.
Your credit report contains personal information such as address, employer, social security number and birth date, information about who you owe money to, how you have paid your bills, and where have applied for credit.
In addition, any civil public record information, such as bankruptcies and judgments, are also shown on your credit report.
There are several reasons to monitor your credit report regularly including:
1. Prevention of identity theft
2. Prevention of fraud
3. To correct any erroneous information or reporting
4. To know what steps you can take to improve your credit
Effective March 1, 2005 (in Iowa) consumers are entitled to one credit report per year from each of the three major credit reporting services: Experian, Equifax and Trans Union.
To comply with this new regulation the three services have created one place for you to obtain your credit report.
You can obtain your free report from the following sources:
| On the internet at: |
www.annualcreditreport.com |
| By Phone at: |
1-877-322-8228 |
| By Mail: |
We can provide you with the appropriate form to fill out |
These are the only places you can get your free credit report as required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Beware of others offering free credit reports. They are trying to sell you something.
You can get all three reports at once, or spread them out over the year. If you get all three at once, you will not be able to get another free report for 12 months.
These reports do not contain your credit score, which is what many credit grantors use to make a decision whether or not to extend credit to you. You can purchase your credit score, for a fee, from any of the credit reporting services, or from the www.annualcreditreport.com website. The cost to purchase your score will typically be $5.00 to $8.00.
The Horizons Consumer Credit Counseling Service will be happy to review your credit report with you to help point out ways to improve your credit, help you find discrepancies in the information, and show you how to dispute information you feel is erroneous. The cost for reviewing your report is $25.00
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