Last fall, I wrote an article about how to use credit cards effectively without paying interest. Well, I decided to request a copy of my credit report for the very first time from the credit reporting agency, Equifax (the other big agency is TransUnion).
It turns out that we are all entitled to one free credit report from both of these credit reporting agencies once per year. This report will show how financial institutions that put out credit cards like Visa, Mastercard and American Express have reported you to Equifax and TransUnion. Other loans companies also report about your status to the credit reporting agencies.
Whenever you apply for a loan or lease, this report is requested from Equifax and/or TransUnion so that the potential creditor, loaner or landlord can see exactly what your credit history has been. If you have a bad history of paying up debts, then your credit report will not be a shining one.
Correct Any Mistakes On Credit Report
However, sometimes there could be mistakes on your credit report. It might state that you have not paid a certain payment while in reality, you have. So in these cases, you are entitled to correct Equifax and TransUnion so that your credit looks better. You certainly do not want an error to make your credit report look less than stellar.
Since we are all entitled to one free copy each year, it’s a good idea to do so just to check what is on your credit report. In my case, all of my credit card companies reported an R1 rating for me which is the top one since I always pay my bills on time.
And there were not any errors either. So if any company ever wants to verify my credit by requesting my credit report from either Equifax or TransUnion, they will see a top rating for my credit.
If you are fixing up a bad credit history, pulling your own credit report should be one of the first steps so that you now exactly what is on it. Then you can take steps to gradually improve your credit rating.
