How to check your credit report

You never know when an emergency
will arise and you will have to borrow money. So it's important to know how to check your credit report for errors BEFORE you need to apply for a loan.
You might need an equity line of credit, and when you go to
refinance your home, your credit rating will be so low that you
won't even qualify for a bad credit mortgage!
Or a credit card application that arrives in the mail and after you fill it out, you get
turned down because you didn't check your credit to find
outdated, negative entries in your credit report.
Or you've had enough and you want to eliminate credit card
debt, but you can't be a credit consolidation loan even if you
promised to attend consumer credit counseling classes everyday!
It's important to remember that it's not that you're a bad person. It's just that you have bad
credit, and you've first got to understand this: Bad credit is
like bad body odor... it can be fixed!
But you'll need to do certain things in order, like: (1) check your credit, (2) carefully review your credit
report, (3) dispute mistakes in your credit report, (4) write
letters to fix your bad credit, and (5) check your credit again
and again by getting your free annual credit report online.
You can get better credit than you have today simply by making
a plan to fix your credit and sticking to it until your credit
score improves!
You can pay to get your current FICO credit score, but what's really important is knowing what's IN your credit files. For the time being, we'd recommend simply downloading the free credit report you
are entitled to from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion available
for free at http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ .
Once you have your credit reports, you must then take the time to read through
each once carefully, checking the codes and entries and
matching them up with what really happened when
you used credit in the past.
It you were late making payments, then you'll have to wait out
this negative information. You cannot have accurate negative
information removed from your credit files. You can only
dispute errors in your credit report. And errors are likely to
slip in from time to time, so eliminating these during your
credit check will be relatively easy.
Some errors might be that outdated information remains. For
instance, sometimes credit information from a person who shares
a similar name could appear in your credit report and do damage
to your credit score. Or maybe you disputed a bill with a
hosptial in your hometown, and even though you thought the bill
was waived, it winds up showing up as being turned over to a
collection agency, and you have to learn how to deal with a
collection agency all over again!
Reading your credit reports from the three reporting bureaus may seem overwhelming at first. But
reading them will help you start understanding what's in
your credit history that lenders are viewing when they are
making the decision of whether or not to loan money to you.
Armed with this knowledge, plus the effort you will put in to
eliminate any and all errors from your online credit report at
the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and
TransUnion), you will go from being haunted with bad credit to
enjoying better credit and getting that loan you need, when you
need it, at favorable interest rates and terms that you
negotiate with your banker.
When you give your credit report a "check-up" you will need a
working knowledge of basic credit repair techniques, and we've
published a summary of these for you to use free at
http://www.findhow2.com/repair-credit.html .