Photo: Yuri Samoilov, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Most people only look at their credit report when something forces them to, usually a mortgage application or a card that gets declined at the worst possible moment. That's a shame, because looking is free, it takes about fifteen minutes, and you can do it as often as once a week.
The weekly part is still news to a lot of people. For years the rule was one free report per bureau per year. That changed during the pandemic, when the three big credit bureaus started offering free weekly reports, and in 2023 they made the arrangement permanent.
November is a good month to do it. Holiday shopping means more card swipes, more store-card offers at the register and, unfortunately, more fraud. A quick look now gives you a clean baseline before all of that starts. (As always, this is general information, not advice tailored to your situation.)
Where to get your reports, and where not to
There is exactly one official site for free reports in the U.S.: AnnualCreditReport.com. It's the site set up under federal law for the three nationwide bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. You can also request reports by phone at 1-877-322-8228 or by mail.
Type the address carefully. Plenty of lookalike sites use "free credit report" in their names and then try to sign you up for a paid monitoring plan. The official site won't ask for a credit card to give you your reports.
You'll have to answer a few identity questions, often about old addresses or loan payments. They can be oddly hard (I once blanked on a car loan from years earlier), so have some old statements nearby if your memory is like mine.
What's in a credit report, and what isn't
Your report is a record of how you've handled credit. It lists your open and closed accounts, balances and credit limits, your payment history, any accounts sent to collections, and certain public records such as bankruptcies. It also shows inquiries, meaning who has pulled your report and when.
What it doesn't include is your credit score. The free reports are just the raw data the scores are built from. Plenty of banks and card issuers show you a score for free these days, but the report is where you can actually spot a problem.
Checking your own report also has no effect on your score. It counts as a "soft" inquiry, the same kind a lender makes when it sends you a pre-approved offer. Only "hard" inquiries, the ones that come from applying for new credit, can nudge a score down.
The errors worth looking for
Errors are not rare. A Federal Trade Commission study published in 2012 found that about one in five consumers had an error on at least one of their three reports. Most were minor, but some were big enough to affect what people paid to borrow.
Go through each report section by section. The things I'd look at first are accounts you don't recognize, which can be a sign of identity theft, and late payments you're sure you made on time. After that, check for paid-off debts still showing a balance, the same debt listed twice, and old negative items that should have aged off. Most negative information drops off after seven years, and bankruptcies can stay for up to ten.
Don't panic over small things like a misspelled name or an old address. They're worth fixing, but they don't usually move your score.
How to dispute a mistake
If you find something wrong, you can dispute it online, by phone or by mail with the bureau that's reporting it. It's also worth contacting the company that supplied the information, such as the card issuer or lender. Keep copies of anything you send and note the dates.
The bureau generally has to investigate within 30 days and tell you the result. If the item can't be verified, it has to be corrected or removed. If an error shows up on all three reports, you'll need to dispute it with each bureau separately, which is tedious but worth it.
Freezes and fraud alerts, both free
If something looks like fraud, or you'd simply like more protection, you have two free tools. A credit freeze stops lenders from pulling your report to open new accounts in your name. Since 2018, placing and lifting a freeze has been free at all three bureaus by federal law, and you can usually lift it temporarily online in a few minutes when you need to apply for something yourself.
A fraud alert is lighter. It tells lenders to take extra steps to confirm your identity before opening an account. An initial alert lasts a year, and you only need to place it with one bureau, which is required to tell the other two.
A freeze costs nothing and is easy to undo, so if you aren't planning to apply for credit soon, I think it's worth at least reading up on.
A simple habit for this month
Pull all three reports from AnnualCreditReport.com this week and save copies. Then set a reminder to check again every few months, or before a big application such as a mortgage or car loan.
If you'd rather spread it out, check one bureau at a time on a rotating schedule, so you're looking at something fresh every month or so. A disputed account is much easier to sort out when you catch it in its first few weeks than after it has sat there for a year.
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