It’s very easy to get a no strings attached credit report. Simply go to www.annualcreditreport.com and follow the instructions for obtaining a credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies. They offer online access to your reports or they will mail them to you via United States Post Office. annualcreditreport.com is a truly free way to obtain your credit reports and not be bombarded with advertisements and hundreds of drip emails in your inbox all day. There certainly are scams you should avoid and almost every other site out there that offers free credit reports simply wants to obtain your email address and personal data so they can bombard you with advertising.

Your next question is “What will your credit score have on it and how should you use that information to improve your credit score?” Well there is a difference between a credit report and your credit score. If you want to obtain your credit score, you’re going to have to obtain your credit score from a company such as Discover to obtain your free FICO score. Again, beware of the email blasts; but Discover is a reputable credit card and if you unsubscribe from their email advertising, they will honor your request.

The best way to improve your credit score is to be sure that the total amount of money you carry month-to-month on your credit cards does not exceed 31% of your total available credit on your cards. Another way, although obvious, to improve your credit score is to be sure that you make your payments timely. Further, another way to improve your credit score is to obtain your three credit reports, go through them, look for any mistakes, and dispute the mistakes you find. One should know that there are roughly 19,000,000 mistakes on peoples credit reports at any one time, so it is not uncommon that people’s credit scores are lower than they should be.