Score one for consumers like us!

It used to be that individual and household credit ratings were secret, but now you can get easy access to profiles of your credit history that show whether you've met your credit obligations and how quickly you've paid back creditors.

Dolan Straight Talk Tip: We recommend you check your credit rating (that is, your rating, your spouse's, and your joint rating) once a year through the major credit-reporting agencies in the United States. Not only is this smart, but it's now the law: Everyone has the right to one free credit report per year. Think of this as a checkup on your financial health so that you'll be fully informed as to your qualifications for loans on the big purchases, such as a house, car, or college tuition. This also lets you know if you need to fix bad credit.

Arming yourself with a credit report is, in fact, part of the pre-qualifying process for loans; if you have a good rating then you're in a position to negotiate for the best terms. And if a catastrophe should ever befall you and cause you to fall back on payments, a good prior credit rating will stand as evidence to creditors that you are reliable under normal circumstances and deserve a break.

With these frequent checkups, you'll also find out if there are any mistakes on your report that need to be cleared up. And just as important in this day and age, it's also a great way to double-check that there's been no identity theft or fraudulent activity affecting your credit rating.

Getting a Copy of Your Credit Report

You can request a credit report directly from any of the three major credit-reporting agencies: Experian (www.experian.com), TransUnion (www.transunion.com), and Equifax (www.equifax.com).

Dolan Straight Talk Tip: We also recommend that you get your credit report through the online service MyFICO.com, which is operated by Fair, Isaac and Co., creator of the FICO score, the credit scoring model that is most widely used to determine a person's credit risk. For $12.95, MyFICO gives you an analysis of your current score in plain English, based on your Equifax credit profile, as well as helpful tips on what specific factors most heavily affected your score and how you can improve it over time. While the credit-reporting agencies can take up to six weeks to send you a report, MyFICO's report is available to you online for 30 days following the order date.

Your report will give you a credit score of 100 to 900. Most U.S. consumers score between 300 and 850. Generally, the higher your score, the more favorably a lender will view your application for credit. The MyFICO report will also tell you where you fit in comparison to other consumers and what this means to lenders.

Bankrate.com, an excellent Web site that offers credit advice in addition to surveys of good and bad credit card rates, recommends checking with all three of the major agencies because each report will have different information. This is due to the fact that credit reporting is a voluntary system and creditors subscribe to whichever agency they want.

If you find that your credit report doesn't list creditors that you always pay on time, you can notify the creditor that you want your good record reported to the credit bureau. By law, the credit issuer is required to respond within a "reasonable time." That's some law-speak and it's the way the laws are written; in plain English a reasonable time should be about 30 days.

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