Annual check-up

No, I'm not talking about the physical kind but the credit kind. Like the visit with the doctor, it's easy to put off checking your credit history even though the credit rating companies have done just about everything they possibly can to make it easy and painless to do.

I finally got up the nerve following a seminar at the Sac State Renaissance Society at which the representative from the California Office of Privacy Protection handed out material related to identity theft. Checking your credit history regularly is one way to reduce the chance that someone is using your identity without your knowledge.

You are allowed one free credit check every 12 months. Since there are three major credit reporting companies, many people elect to get a report every four months from each of the companies in turn - say Experian in January, Equifax in May, and TransUnion in September. I've chosen that route so I only requested one report this time. It was so quick and easy that I had my report in less than 5 minutes from the time I started. It might have taken 10 minutes to get all three. I would caution you, however, that the reports are long so you may consider saving the html page rather than printing it out. I have Adobe Acrobat so I printed mine as a 20 page pdf file rather than using up paper.

To order your very own credit report (and note that husband and wife each have their own unique report) you can

call 877-322-8228;

write to
Annual Credit Report Request Service
PO Box 105281
Atlanta, GA 30348-5281

or easiest of all go to
www.annualcreditreport.com

You'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.