Credit Report Monitoring

Consumer credit reporting agencies offer to "monitor" your credit for a fee. Credit monitoring services can be costly. These services cost anywhere between $43.80 per year to nearly $150.00 per year depending upon the provider. Typically, these services say they will notify you if anything unusual or suspicious appears on your consumer credit report. Don't bother with credit-monitoring services. Instead, you should monitor your own credit.

You can monitor your own credit and make sure that your record represents you fairly and accurately by ordering and regularly reviewing your consumer credit reports from the three major reporting agencies. You can request a report from each of the three consumer credit reporting bureaus at the same time. The advantage of reviewing the three reports at once is that you can get a complete picture of your consumer credit report history that could be reported to others.

However, 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.

If you find errors, no matter how small, be sure you get them fixed, and make sure that you contact all three bureaus with your change. You should receive amended reports within a week after the changes take effect.

A credit monitoring service is not for everyone, but if you want to keep a close eye on your credit there are some great services out there. I use a credit monitoring service because I've been a victim of fraud in the past and I disagree with groups that say you should look at your credit report only once or twice a year.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission says it takes 12 months, on average, for a victim of identity theft to notice the crime. A credit monitoring service will alert you, usually daily or weekly, to changes in your credit - helping you to stop the theft before it gets out of control.

Whenever you order a credit report from anyone, you may be required to provide your name, address, telephone number, social security number, and credit card. This information is used to verify that you are who you say you are. It is one of the few times it is okay to provide this information. Even if you order a report directly from the credit bureaus, you will have to provide this information to verify your identity.

For more information on credit monitoring, credit report monitoring, unlimited credit reports, unlimited credit reports and scores, browse our independent online guide. We will tell you even more.