How to Monitor Your Credit Rating

Regularly monitoring your credit rating is an important step to assuring your financial health. A good credit rating can give you better interest rates on car loans, home loans and personal loans, and your credit rating is looked at by everyone from a potential landlord to a potential employer. Monitoring your credit rating also lets you see whether your identity has been stolen or compromised. At first, monitoring your credit rating will take an hour or two. But after that you'll have to spend only a few minutes every couple of weeks to stay on top of it.

Instructions

1

Purchase a full credit report on yourself. Although everyone is entitled to a free credit card report a year from AnnualCreditReport.com, purchasing a full report will give you the most detailed information. You can purchase a report from each of the main credit agencies, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax, each of which will give you a separate score.

2

Read your credit report carefully and verify that all the information is correct across all three reports. Make sure that your most recent address is listed, and that all previous addresses are correct. Check that all the credit accounts shown as open or closed are ones you know you opened or closed throughout your credit history. If you see incorrect information on any agency's report, contact that credit agency to dispute it.

3

Make a list of all the things that could be hurting your credit. Too many accounts open, a low debt to open credit ratio, delinquencies, or even a short credit history or too few accounts open can harm your credit. Most credit-reporting tools will show you what could be hurting your rating and give you tips on how to improve it. Concentrate on the things that affect your credit the most, such as too much debt and delinquencies, and plan ways to improve those areas.

4

Sign up for a free credit-monitoring tool. There are few available online that will send you reminders to check your credit score. You can also schedule it in a personal calender. Optimally, you want to check your credit every six weeks or so, but twice a year will be enough. You don't have to look at a full credit report each time you check your credit score, but credit-monitoring sites will allow you to keep track of how your score might look and will give you information such as total accounts, length of history, payment history, open credit, and hard credit inquiries.

5

Continue to run your credit report at least once a year. Make sure you pay your bills on time, and don't open more credit accounts than you need. You will see your credit score improve over time.