By Kathleen Z Adams

There are not many people who appreciate how vital it is to check your own credit before they apply for a new loan or other type of credit. Many times when a lender pulls a credit report there are all kinds of troubles that the consumer was entirely ignorant of and didn't even know about.

The majority of all credit reports do have inaccuracies and mistakes. It is projected that as many as 75% of all reports have erroneous information of some sort, be it identity mistakes or just wrongly portrayed credit. If you have mistakes on your credit you can dispute them and get them removed but in order to do so you must be conscious that they are there.

Many people are under the erroneous assumption that in order to check their own credit they must have a suitable motive to do so. This is untrue. You have the right and even the responsibility to check your own credit report often. Identity theft is now on the rise and there are also the inevitable errors that come from the sheer volume of reporting that many lenders must do. Everybody should make the effort to check his or her own information often.

Just one single error on a report can affect the interest rate that you are offered and you can be turned down on loans for key purchases such as homes or cars. These days, even insurance companies turn people down for credit problems. That is why it is so vital to check your credit report often.

Many different people can request to confirm your credit report information. Landlords, utility companies, employers, hospitals, credit unions, finance companies, banks, insurance companies, mortgage companies, retailers, credit card companies, department stores, lawyers, courts and many others are now making the appeal to check your credit. It is critical to know however, that anyone who checks your credit must have your agreement and you should be very discriminating on who you will let see your credit.

In order to check out your own credit you can contact any of the three major credit-reporting bureaus. Those are Experian, Equifax and TransUnion in the United States. Each bureau retains their own information and they do not trade information so therefore it is important to contact all three of them.

There are also credit monitoring services that you can take advantage of. These services will allow you to verify all three bureaus at one time. They can also set an alert to let you know anytime a change occurs on your report.

You are accountable for knowing just what is being reported on your credit report and you can take steps to improve and repair your credit if you are aware of what is showing on your report.

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