Credit Card Forums

Don't you love all those advertisements for free credit reports that aren't really free at all? In the U.S., I believe all of the states now participate in a free credit report program. We can pull our credit reports from all of the three major credit bureaus once a year with no fee. The only drawback is that our FICO score is not available on these reports.

Well I havent seen any of those reports yet. Are they that usefull?

ValleyMan wrote:Well I havent seen any of those reports yet. Are they that usefull?

Yes. Credit is very important. If you have credit and most importantly GOOD CREDIT it will help you get the best rate on loans and credit card offers. The better your credit the more trustworthy of a borrower you become to banks. So having good credit is a must if you want to buy a house lets say in the future and get the best interest rate possible. The difference between what a person with bad credit pays for a loan and those with good credit is big. A 3 percentage points difference for example will save you thousands of dollars in interest over the life of the loan.

Can I ask for a report from my bank? is that how I can get one?

ValleyMan, if you go to http://www.annualcreditreport.com, that should be the right site to get your free reports. Just remember you can only get this information once a year, so be sure to print off a copy off all three reports. You may be surprised by what you find on there. I had some old information on mine that should have been cleared off before.