Looking Over my FREE Credit Report

This past weekend while listening to some local financial talk show on the radio, they mentioned AnnualCreditReport.com.

A few months ago, I’d visited the site, submitted all of my information, and selected Equifax as my report of choice. Things seemed to be working great — until they forwarded me on to Equifax’s website.

Once there, they tried to up-sell me (not unexpected), and they asked for a user name and password. I didn’t have one — and I didn’t want to sign up for anything either.

No way around it, they weren’t going to display my report.

It left a bad taste in my mouth — I felt like I’d been ripped off even though I hadn’t spent a dime.

So on Sunday, with prompting from the radio show, I went back to AnnualCreditReport.com for another try.

I entered all of my info, steered away from Equifax — choosing Experian instead, and clicked ‘Submit’.

Experian also tried to up-sell me with monthly updates and stuff like that. Down at the bottom, though, was the link for “No thanks. Show my report.”

Click!

And there it was!

A lot longer than I’d expected… but nothing negative on there…

It lists 17 accounts, all thankfully in good standing — 4 Bank of America accounts, 2 BMW Financial Services accounts, 3 Chase Bank accounts, 1 Countrywide account, 1 First USA account, 1 McCue Mortgage account, 2 Sears accounts, 1 Toyota account and 2 Citi accounts.

Does that add up to 17? I sure hope so.

For each account, it tells you when you opened it, what the credit limit is, what your balance is, recent payment info, whether you’ve ever been late on a payment, whether the account is open or closed, and lots of other fun stuff.

Nothing real earth shattering, but still some neat info to leaf/scroll through.

Thankfully, while I don’t exactly remember opening all 17 accounts, nothing seemed out of the ordinary and little additional thought explained each and every entry.

For one of the Chase entries, I would have been 9 years old when the account was opened…

Hmmm… Identity theft?

Well, no.

It’s obviously one of my parent’s accounts where I’m an authorized user — likely used while I was in University. To their credit, the status for that account is: Open/Never Late.

Fantastic!

As I get my “stuff” more together (in preparation for the remodelling), I’ll detail the, well, details…