How to check your credit report three times a year for free

Your "credit score" is a number assigned by three agencies that receive reports on your credit history, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. These three companies collect data about the debt you have and the payments you make (and not just debt payments) and evaluate how risky it is to lend you money.

You can get an estimate of your credit score for free at websites like CreditKarma. These sites are great for getting an idea of the direction of your credit score, but don't give you much detail about what all is taken into account. 

Knowing the details of your credit history is important because identity theft is so common. If someone gets a hold of some of your personal information, they could open a credit account in your name, rack up the balance and then default on it. If you don't want to manage your credit yourself, you can get a identity theft insurance (which you may want to get anyway). 

There are a few things you can do to minimize your risk of identity theft for free. First, you can check your score estimate at CreditKarma (updated every week). You can also freeze your credit, which prevents anyone (including you) from opening new credit accounts in your name until it is unfrozen.

The last thing you can do for free is to get a look at everyone on your credit history. Normally you would pay to get a peek at your credit history. However, there is a service, Annual Credit Report, that allows you to peek at your credit history from each of the agencies for free once a year. It is a little convoluted of a process to prove that you are who you say you are (what banks have you banked with, what streets you've lived on, etc). 

Getting a peek at your credit history once a year is pretty nice, but you can actually look at it three times a year if you do it just right. Each of the agencies will give you pretty much the same information, so you can just get your report from a different agency every four months. This allows you to get a view into your credit history three times a year for free.

When you get your report from the agencies, save a copy for reference. Then look over the reports for accounts that don't look familiar or things that may have been reported incorrectly. If you see an unfamiliar account with hundreds or even thousands of dollars balance, that may be a fraudulent account and you should report it immediately.