Credit Monitoring

A lot of credit reporting agencies offer to "monitor" your credit for a fee, but beware: these services can be both unnecessary and depending on the provider costly as well (anywhere between $43 to almost $150 a year)! Typically, these services claim that they'll notify you if anything unusual or suspicious appears on your consumer credit report. My advice: don't bother - instead, you should always monitor your own credit.

You can do this by making sure that your record represents you fairly and accurately! Order and regularly review your consumer credit reports from the three major reporting agencies. The advantage of reviewing all three reports at once is that you can get a complete picture of your consumer credit report history, while on the other hand: if you want to monitor the accuracy of your consumer credit reports throughout the year, request your report from one bureau initially, then follow up with another bureau's report four months later, and the third four months after that. This is an effective way to monitor your credit at no cost to you.

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If you find any errors with your report, no matter how big or small, make sure that you get them fixed, and make sure that you then contact all three bureaus with your changes (they won't change them without this step). You should then receive amended reports within a week after the changes take effect. If not, give them a call!

Note: make sure that you always close long, unused accounts that are listed as still active on your consumer credit report. An unused account gives an identity thief a perfect opportunity to strike. Once you close this unused account, ask that it be listed as "closed at the request of the consumer." This will save you from any headaches down the road!

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