Here's How to Get Your Free Credit Reports in 2023

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You probably thought you stopped getting report cards when you finished school, but that's not exactly true. You're constantly graded on how you handle borrowed money, and the results appear in your credit reports. Lenders use these, along with your credit scores, to decide whether they're willing to work with you and what kind of interest rate to charge on loans and credit cards.

It's a pretty big deal, yet a lot of people still don't have any idea what's in their credit reports or how it affects them. Fortunately, there's a simple way that anyone can view their credit reports for free in 2023.

All you have to do is ask

Federal law requires that all three major credit bureaus -- Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion -- provide one free credit report per year to anyone who asks for it. And since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, you've actually been able to request new reports weekly.

You can access these through AnnualCreditReport.com. There are other sites out there that claim to offer free credit reports, but a lot of these require you to sign up for a paid credit monitoring service. Or worse, they could be created by a scammer trying to steal your identity. So stick to AnnualCreditReport.com if you want to avoid these issues.