How can I check my credit score?
http://annualcreditreport.com/ That's the official site for getting your free yearly credit report (one free per year from each of the 3 reporting bureaus). Assuming you are asking about a credit score in the United States, the following applies. To find out your FICO score, navigate to AnnualCreditReport, the official site to help consumers receive their credit report from each of the three organizations providing these scores - Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.  You are - in many states - entitled to a free copy of your credit report from each of these organizations annually.   This copy of your credit report will not contain your credit score from that organization.  It will, however, contain information that goes into your credit score - the lines of credits on file, any delinquencies reported, etc. If you decide you would like to pay for your credit score from each bureau, you will have the option to receive this information while getting your credit report, but you will have to pay a nominal fee for it.  Remember that each of the 3 bureaus gives you a different score.  Averaging your 3 scores should give you a good idea of your FICO score.  Note that your report is far more important than your score - once you know that, you know if you're in a good place or not. These other questions are so close that they might even be considered duplicates, and provide other suggestions for how to check your score. As a warning, don't trust the many ads out there saying you can get your score for free.  Only AnnualCreditReport is considered a safe place for entering the very personal information required to get a score.  The FTC backs this up. Since no one else answered this part of your question yet:  Checking your own credit score or report will not affect it in any way.  It only hurts you when someone looks it up to run a credit check at your request for the purpose of possibly getting a loan, for example a car dealership. This only hurts it a tiny bit, and is not worth worrying about unless you are going to 20 different car dealerships who each do a check. However, it is a good idea not to let them run your credit until you are seriously ready to buy a car. In fact, it is better to just get financing somewhere else and not let them run it at all. "Different states have different laws, check your local laws concerning credit. Some states even guarantee you to get one free credit report per year. If you recently apply for an apartment, a mortgage or denied a credit card or loan, you can usually get a free copy from whomever you authorized to pull your credit report. Sign up credit monitoring service, there are quite a few of these. Most credit card companies offer such service, Amex, Chase, Citibank, etc. It' costs around $10-$20 per month. If you sign up a service and pull your own credit report, it's considered a ""soft"" pull which won't affect your score negatively." Check with your bank.  As of January, 2015, the following banks and credit unions are offering free credit-scores: Announced, in the pipeline: Source: Banks to offer FICO credit scores for free Personal Experience: I've been receiving free FICO score from my credit union for more than 6 months now. Advice: Most people have multiple bank/credit-union accounts. The FICO score will be the same whoever offers it. If none of your financial institutions offer you a free credit-score then you may opt for free services like creditkarma.com or other paid services. Please note that a credit-score is number summarizing your credit-report and should not be confused.  In the news:
Generally speaking, when you are asked whether you consent to a credit check, what is implied is that your identifying information is shared to enable that check.  Most credit nowadays (credit, mortgage, car lease, even cell phone accounts etc.) is simply unavailable without a credit check. "In general, it is unusual for a credit check to occur when you are terminating a contract, since you are no longer requesting credit. If the credit check was a ""hard pull"" it will stay on your credit report for 2 years, but will only have an impact on your credit score for up to 12 months. If the check is a ""soft pull"" it has no impact on your credit score. Since you're past the 12 months boundary anyway, I wouldn't worry about it.  That being said, please feel free to continue your investigation and report back if you can get Comcast to admit they performed the 2nd credit check. I'm sure we'd all be interested to hear their explanation for it." "http://annualcreditreport.com gives you free access to your 3 credit bureau records. (Annual, not ""free"". The ""free"" guys will try to sell you something.)" "The first thing I'd do is to find out your credit (FICO) score.  If you have a good one, try to get another card with a lower rate. Then call up the lender, point to your good score, and your alternatives. If you have a bad score, do nothing. ""Let sleeping dogs lie.""" As of 2014, this answer is deprecated. Read answer here for recent developments up to January 2015.  You can get a free credit report yearly, but you don't get your credit score, just the content of your report. This is useful to make sure your credit history is correct, etc. To get that, visit annualcreditreport.com. Another site which will give you your score for free, really free with no strings attached, is creditkarma.com, which gives you your TransUnion credit score and full TransUnion credit report. The site is run by TransUnion and supported via advertising. At this point Equifax and Experian offer similar services via subscription, but not for free. Update 8/14/2015: CreditKarma now offers the Equifax information as part of their service. Lowest possible credit score is a 350, and thanks bankruptcy state/thin file (aka, no history). If you have a car loan, you won't be thin file anymore.  Do you have derogatory marks on your score?  Create an account at www.creditkarma.com  If he drops you from that account, your score will likely go down if you have outstanding balances. "I always hesitate to provide an answer to ""how does this affect my credit score?"" questions, because the credit agencies do not publish their formulas and the formulas do change over time. And many others have done more reverse engineering than I to figure out what factors do affect the scores. To some extent, there is no way to know other than to get your credit score and track it over time. (The credit report will tell you what the largest negative factors are.) However, let me make my prediction. You have credit, you aren't using a large percentage of it, and don't have defaults/late payments. So, yes, I think it would help your credit score and would build a history of credit. Since this is so unusual, this is just an educated guess." "First of all, whatever you do, DON'T PAY!  Credit reporting agencies operate on aged records, and paying it now will most certainly not improve your score.  For example, let's say that you had an unpaid debt that was reported as a ""charge-off"" to the credit bureaus.  After, say, six months, the negative effect on your score is reduced.  It is reduced even further after a year or two, and after two years, the negative effect on your score is negligible. Now, say you were to pay the debt after the two years.  This would ""refresh"" the record, and show as a ""paid charge-off"".  Sure, now it shows as paid, but it also shows the date of the record as being today, which increases the effect on your credit drastically.  In other words, you would have just shot yourself in the foot, big-time. As others have noted, the best option is to dispute the item.  If, for some reason, it isn't removed, you are allowed to submit an annotation to the item, explaining your side of the story.  Anyone pulling your credit record would see this note, which can help you in some instances.  In any case, these scam artists don't deserve your money. Finally, you should check who is the local ombusdman, and report this agent to them.  She could lose her license for such a practice." One reason why keep my DCU account active.  Free fico credit scores! https://www.dcu.org/electronic_services/index.html but specifically this page https://www.dcu.org/electronic_services/FICO.html By signing up to receive your FREE credit score in PC Branch you'll be   able to monitor your credit score, receive two reasons why your credit   score is not higher, and learn how to take positive steps towards   improving your score. Other services such as this may cost you more   than $165* annually. Through DCU you can receive your Equifax FICO   Credit Score via PC Branch under Account Manager in your Inbox once a   month FREE as part of your Checking Plus or Relationship Checking   benefits. ... Digital Credit Union With new credit scores tend to be very volatile. It could be something as small as carrying a higher balance or credit inquiries.  Like I mentioned, check Credit Karma to confirm nothing has changed. Also, see your inquiries. That may have impacted your score Is it possible for the card issuing banks to check my score without my permission? As far as I understand these things, that is exactly the whole purpose of these sorts of credit-rating institutions. The banks and other financial businesses are their customers. They exist to serve those customers. Their relationship, if any, with a consumer is probably secondary to that. When you apply for credit, you give that business any permission needed. You're going to have a huge problem getting approved for anything as long as you have an unpaid bill on your report. Pay it and make sure its reported as paid in full - ASAP. Once that settled, your credit will start to improve slowly. Can't do anything about that, it will take time. You can make the situation improve a bit faster by lending money to yourself and having it reported regularly on your report. How? Easy. Get a secured credit card. What does it mean? You put X amount of money in a CD and the bank will issue you a credit card secured by that CD. Your credit line will be based on the amount in that CD, and you'll probably pay some fees to the bank for the service (~$20-50/year, shop around). You might get lucky and find a secured card without fees, if you look hard enough. Secured cards are reported as revolving credit (just as any other credit card) and are easy to get because the bank doesn't take the risk - you do.  If you default on your payments - your CD goes to cover the debt, and the card gets cancelled. But make absolutely sure that you do not default. Charge between 10% and 30% of the credit limit each month, not more. Pay the balance shown on your credit card statement in full every month and by the due date shown on your monthly statement.  It will take a while, but you would typically start noticing the improvement within ~6-12 months. Stop applying for stuff. Not store cards, not car loans, you're not going to get anything, and will just keep dragging your scores down. Each time you have a pull on your report, the score goes down. A lot of pulls, frequent pulls - the score goes down a lot. Lenders can see when one is desperate, and no-one wants to lend money to desperate people.  Optimally lenders want to lend money to people who doesn't need loans, but in order to keep the business running they'll settle for slightly less - people who don't usually need loans, and pay the loans they do have on time. You fail on both, as you're desperate for a loan and you have unpaid bills on your report. I can think of two services off the top of my head that offer free credit score information here in the UK. One being from one of the big three. No legal requirement to offer that service for free to consumers as far as I'm am aware  There's probably other services too.. Well, I was actually just looking at my own 10-yr old. She does dance/ballet all year round and golf/tennis in the summer. Just the shoes, costumes, clubs, etc. run to about 1k. One dance lesson per week is about 1K/year (she does three). And summer golf/tennis lessons plus memberships about 1K.  soccer and baseball are cheaper. but hockey is significantly more expensive - and you have to travel a lot all year round. The idea that you should buy quality, long lasting clothes shouldn't go unchallenged. It's just not true for everybody. If you have a job or a lifestyle that makes it so your clothes are going to get worn out fast regardless of quality, buying expensive clothes doesn't make sense. With that said: look for heavier-feeling fabrics, avoid colors that will fade (or worse: bleed into your other clothes in the wash). Check the laundry instructions so you can see whether they're on the delicate end of the spectrum. Re: how to extend the life: avoid bleach. Even color safe bleach contains peroxide which can break down fabrics faster.