Credit Scores Education

[PeachesPear]

What's the best credit tip you can share?

The MyAdCouncil site has a good campaign here: http://my.adcouncil.org/creditscores/. You can chat and share the information on Twitter/ Facebook too. I am working with MyAdCouncil on this - and I'd love to know if you find the information useful. I did!

The FreeCreditReport.com commercials catch my attention (and get stuck in my head) but they don't tell me how to improve my credit. I like the Ad Council's Credit Scores Education PSA campaign because it gives you tips to manage your credit and walks you through how to read your report.

I'd love to know your tips and what you think of the sites above.

[jcme]

Watch out for costs associated with some sites that advertise free credit reports. Read the fine print, many make you sign up for credit monitoring services in order to get a copy of your credit report and it may be from only one reporting agency.

If you go to AnnualCreditReport.com (http://AnnualCreditReport.com), you can request one report from each of the three reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) yearly at no cost and there is no need to sign up for anything. You cannot get your "free" credit report from anywhere else, including the reporting agency's web sites.

Other tips...

All three credit scores are unique to the reporting company and are not the same as your FICO score.

You can get your annual credit reports all at once, or stagger them throughout the year. I've heard good and bad for both ways. All at once and you can compare them better, staggered you may be able to see any issues that need to be addressed sooner.

MyFico.com (http://myfico.com) is a good site. You can purchase your FICO score there ($15.95) (I've seen some credit monitoring services offer it for free with sign up of their service). This is something good to get before applying for a major loan since your FICO score dictates your loan rate.

Take care