How do I get my credit reports for free?

You can order one copy of your credit reports from each of the major credit bureaus once every 12 months at www.annualcreditreport.com. That is the official site the credit bureaus were required to set up. Other sites like freecreditreport.com that have all the commercials are not really free sites. They make you enroll in credit monitoring services with monthly fees in order to get your credit reports.

AnnualCreditReport.com is the official free site but it can sometimes be hard to get your credit reports through. A lot of people have trouble because you are required to enter most recent addresses (can be tough when you move around a lot) and the addresses you enter have to match what they have on record so if their data is correct, it's hard to guess what information they are looking for. If you can't get the annual credit report site to work, you can still get a free credit report from FreeCreditReport.com as long as you make sure to cancel the credit monitoring service before they start charging your credit card. If you don't cancel, you'll start getting charged about $15 a month for monitoring after the "free credit report" grace period has ended.