Who Else Regularly Checks Their Credit Report?

And who is totally going to do it now that I’ve mentioned it?

Photo credit: MorganK, CC0 Public Domain.

Last summer, I wrote an article about credit report sites for The Simple Dollar, which meant I pulled all three of my credit reports—Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax—from AnnualCreditReport.com.

Then I set a reminder to start pulling my reports again, one year later.

As I’m sure many of you know, you’re entitled to one free credit report from each of the three major reporting services each year. A lot of people choose to stagger their reports and get one every four months instead of all three at once, and I have set the appropriate recurring appointments in my calendar.

This weekend, I pulled my Experian credit report. Everything looked good—I have no reason to suspect anyone is trying to access my credit—but there’s one item that I’m trying to decide whether I need to dispute.

Experian provides a list of “addresses associated with your credit,” and one of the addresses on the list is my parents’ current address. I’ve never actually lived at that address; my parents moved after I graduated from college. I often send packages to that address, but I’m not sure why Experian would assume my parents’ address was “associated with my credit.”

I should check in with my folks about this, to see if they’re connected to my credit in a way that I’ve forgotten about. If they aren’t, I guess I’ll have to fill out Experian’s online dispute form. The dispute process is easy enough; I did it last year with Equifax when it listed a previous address as my current address. (I move way too often.)

Do you check your credit reports regularly? Have I inspired anyone to go visit AnnualCreditReport.com and set up some recurring calendar reminders? Have you ever found anything on your credit report that wasn’t supposed to be there?


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