Order Your Free Annual Credit Report

We all know we can get a free copy of our credit report annually. The commercials make sure of that. What we may not realize is that not all free credit report sites are the same. MOST of them aren't actually giving you your credit report for free; at a minimum they are signing up for some other offer(s) in the process. However, you can get 1 copy of your credit report from each of the 3 major reporting agencies each year, and you should. The official website for doing this is AnnualCreditReport.com (note it doesn't say free at the beginning). To keep the best eye on your credit, you may want to space your orders out and order one report from each agency every 4 months. By doing this, you're more likely to catch a problem (like identity theft) early.