Keep your credit purring like the engine of your car

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January 11th, 2008 - Posted by Joe

Keeping on top of the contents of your credit report is like performing maintenance on your car. It will prevent long term problems and, while some people may be qualified to do it themselves, for most of us it is probably best left to professionals.

Thanks to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (or FACT Act) you can request one free credit report each year from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion at AnnualCreditReport.com.

While the development of AnnualCreditReport.com has brought a lot of awareness to the general public on the importance of staying on top of their credit report and score, we think that most consumers need more protection than just a once per year review of their credit health. Think about what would happen if you only changed the oil in your car once per year!

Luckily, all the major credit bureaus offer credit report and monitoring services that make it easy to monitor changes in your credit as they happen. This is much better than just relying on your free annual credit report because changes can post at anytime to your credit. If you are only checking your credit report once per year you could be letting negative items or errors sit on your report for months before you identify them. This can cost you in both time and money in the long run.

Each of these credit report monitoring services will give you access to credit reports and scores as well as email alerts in the case that any suspect activity or negative items appear on your credit file. The type of reports and the frequency at which you can access them vary by provider. We strongly suggest that our readers sign up for a credit report service that offers access to reports and scores from all three credit bureaus.

Our top picks are Equifax and Identity Guard because they offer both access to and monitoring of all three of your credit reports for a single, low monthly payment.
If you would like to learn more about credit report monitoring services you can read our free credit report guide and reviews at NextAdvisor.com.