The most authoritative credit report website, Annual Credit Report, now offers one free report from all three credit bureaus every week! It used to be available only once a year, and this program has now become a permanent perk! See below for a detailed usage guide and how to read a credit report.

What Is a Credit Report

For people living in the United States, credit history is something closely tied to everyday life. Renting an apartment, signing up for a phone plan, opening a credit card, getting a loan, and more all require a credit check. A credit report, as the name suggests, is a report of that credit history.

In the United States, there are three major credit bureaus (in no particular order),

  • Experian (EX)
  • Equifax (EQ)
  • Transunion (TU)

There are many smaller credit bureaus as well, such as SageStream (formerly ID Analytics), which is recommended to be frozen before applying for a US Bank credit card, and ARS (Advanced Resolution Services).

But here, we will only discuss the major bureaus.

Credit History and Credit Score

See the ymlulu article on this site, Overview of Credit History and Credit Scores.

Why Get a Credit Report

  • Check for errors and report them right away if there are any
  • Check for signs of identity theft and dispute them promptly if needed
  • Accurately see that bureau’s HP status and account-opening timeline, especially for Chase’s 5/24 policy

How to Get a Credit Report

According to US laws related to credit history, individuals can get one free credit report per week from each bureau (Experian, Equifax, Transunion).

The easiest way to get it is of course online. Specifically, go to https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ and follow the instructions there to check your credit report.

Click the red box to start checking your credit report

After clicking the red box, you will go to the next page

These are some personal details; just fill them out truthfully

Here you choose the credit bureau you want to check. In this example, chanye chose Experian because TU and EQ credit reports can be obtained every week through CreditKarma.

Here you need to answer some additional verification questions, similar to the usual identity verification for credit reports. Once you complete them, you can get the report.

How to Read a Credit Report

By following the steps in the previous section, the credit report has been successfully obtained. Now chanye will explain the meaning of each item in the credit report:

Of course, chanye recommends saving this report as a PDF here for future reference

Personal Information

As the name suggests, this is the personal information page, which usually includes your name, phone number, year of birth, past/current addresses, and so on.

Negative Records

This section usually shows whether you have any collection records, bankruptcy records, and so on—in short, negative information.

Account Information

Below this section you will see all of your account information, including credit cards, loans, and more.

For example, this is what the information for chanye’s second Discover card looks like:

Here, you can clearly see the open date, account number, the current balance, the balance for each billing period, and payment status.

Credit Inquiry Records

Hard Pull

Here you can see all requests made by institutions for your personal credit report information. Note the content marked in the red box: it means the credit inquiries below this point will be visible to all inquirers other than you, which is what people commonly call a hard pull.

So what does a hard pull look like? Here are excerpts of chanye’s BofA, Chase, AMEX, and Citi HP information for reference.

Soft Pull

Anything below this will only be visible to the person being queried (the account holder), so it has no impact on your credit score. That is what is known as a soft pull.

Fun fact: here, you should be able to see a lot of absurd soft pull records from credit institutions, including the notorious credit one (note: not Capital One). For example, this appears in chanye’s soft pull information:

The frequency of these soft pulls is outrageous... Capital One is even worse... PS: chanye does not have a C1 card.

Summary

That’s all chanye has to say about credit reports. After getting your credit report, the most important thing is to carefully verify everything on it. If you find any inaccuracies (and that is not uncommon), contact the bureau promptly to dispute them. Also, the reports from all three bureaus are free to obtain once a week, and the timing is separate, so you can request one bureau’s report every four months in rotation.