You should examine your credit report at least twice a year. In examining your report, it is important that you be on the lookout for any erroneous listings on your credit report. While it is necessary to question any irregularities and contact the credit bureau with any challenges, it is a federal offense to lie when disputing your credit report.

To get a copy of your credit report, contact the three major credit bureaus. If you have been denied credit within the past 60 days, they will issue a free report to you. If you live in Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Vermont, you can get a report at no charge; otherwise, the charge is $8 unless your state has arranged a different fee with the credit bureaus. When I last checked, Maine’s cost was $3 and Connecticut’s was $5. All of the credit bureaus may not have the same information, so you will have to look at all three.

There are offers on the Internet to send you a compilation of all three. Only Experian and Equifax allow online delivery, so the three agency report must be sent to you by mail; you may find several companies that make this offer for various prices.

To order the credit reports, you need to send them copies of some identification that shows your name and address. Your driver’s license, a recent utility bill, or a recent credit card bill will do just fine. You also need to include your signature with the letter so they know you are authorizing the credit report. You may order your report and your spouse’s at the same time, but your spouse must include the same information and also sign the letter. There are stiff fines and possible imprisonment for ordering a credit report without proper authorization.

If you have a spotty credit history, you may feel shy about asking for your credit reports. You can’t clean them up if you don’t know what is in them. Don’t waste time beating yourself up; just boldly ask for your credit report and do what you need to do to fix it.

If you need some help creating a form to order your credit reports, try this as an example.

After you have received your credit reports, go over them very carefully and make sure that they are correct. If you find that you have old credit cards or store cards still on your credit report, call the creditors and ask them to close the accounts and inform the appropriate credit bureau. Each of the three major credit bureaus is supposed to inform the others of changes you requested, but you will need to look the next time you get your credit report to see if it was done.

While it would be ideal to have a perfect or near-perfect credit report, the reality is that many people have negative marks on their credit history and still get loans. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to get credit; it just might affect the size of the down payment required to make your purchase or the rate of interest.

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