One of the best things happened to every consumer in the United States about 3 years ago. The Federal government passed the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act), a law allowing everyone a free copy of their credit report through the three major credit reporting bureaus (Transunion, Experian and Equifax). Every year you can get a free copy of your credit report with no hidden fees, offers to sign up for or anything.

So my question to you is: Are you taking advantage of this every year? If not then you may want to start. This will give you all of the information on your report from who the creditors are/were, their contact information, late payments, balances, monthly payments, Public records and more. It does not provide a credit score, however you do have the option of purchasing this directly through their website http://www.annualcreditreport.com/

We should all check our report for accuracy. Sometimes the littlest mistake of an accidental late payment or someone else's bad information being placed on your report can be devastating to your score, sometimes by as much as 100 points! That may very well be the difference between getting a great interest rate to a much higher one. So why not take advantage of this? It's not like you have anything to lose....