How to Verify Your Credit Report

It's very important that you know what's on your credit report. You would not want to be surprised when you're trying to get a mortgage and find you have an old hospital bill in collections and your credit card company says you missed three payments last year. Information like that could be the difference between loan denial and loan approval.

Once a year, you can check your credit report from all three credit bureaus with no cost at www.annualcreditreport.com . Each report is free, but you will have to pay to receive your credit score. However, if the report is wrong, your credit score will be wrong. If the report is accurate, then you can’t do anything about your score.

If you find incorrect information on your credit report, you can immediately file a dispute online and the credit bureaus will investigate. They must either verify the challenged information or remove it within 30 days.