Annual Credit Report

If you weren't already aware, all Americans are entitled to a free credit report from each of the big 3 credit agencies each year. You must go to the federally run central agency in order to do this for free. If you go to Experian, Equifax andTransUnion seperately, you get charged.

I paid for mine back in February and found a great number of errors. I had never looked at my credit history prior to that. I disputed the errors online and when I got my free credit report last week, those errors were all gone.

Not to condone the wrong behavior, but you can dispute everything...whether it's valid or not. They send the dispute to whoever said you owe money. They have 60 days to validate that the claim is still active. If they don't, voila. It's gone. If they do, no harm no foul. It's just you asking if you had paid it yet or not. There were so many errors on mine, I just disputed everything. When it came back, I know some of the valid ones disappeared as well as the errors.

Also, if you owe money to a hospital or doctor, you can add a note that says "medical". When someone checks your credit for lending purposes, they ignore medical debt.

Again, I'm not condoning the misuse of this information. I'll post a permanent link in the ol' links section.