Budget Freak

I just requested a free credit report from www.annualcreditreport.com. You’re entitled to 3 free credit reports a year (I think it was a law that was passed a couple years ago), from each of the major credit reporting companies. They don’t include your FICO score, but it will list all your open accounts and if there are any late or missing payments. It’s a good idea to make sure everything is in order every now and again.

My report was all intact. They did misspell my company name (swapped one letter), but I don’t care enough to fix it. Hopefully that won’t hurt anything. Also, I noticed that Capital One noted that for 4 months in 2006, my account information was “Unknown.” How the heck don’t they know what my credit status was? The other 44 months on the report are all “OK,” but for some reason, those are missing. Strange.

I’m getting more and more concerned with my Capital One card. Part of the reason I wanted my report right now, is because of this article about Capital One hurting your credit score. It seems they record your credit limit as your highest balance, thus hurting your credit balance to credit limit ratio. On my report, Capital One doesn’t even have my credit limit listed, where every other card I have does. Lord only knows what that means.

Anywho, it’s good practice to check your credit report every couple months, especially now that it’s free. The way I’m going to handle it is just to get one report every 4 months from each of the 3 companies. Since I just got this one in March, I’ll set up a reminder in my calendar to request one again in July, and another one in November.

By the way, if you ever do need to check your FICO score, golbguru has posted a great tutorial on getting your credit score on the cheap. Check it out.

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