 TITLE: How to Maintain Your Credit During a Crisis CONTENT: Monitor Your Credit\n-------------------\nCredit reports impact numerous areas of our lives. They help lenders decide whether to approve you for loans and credit cards, and what interest rate and terms you'll receive. Landlords and employers often review credit reports during the application process to assess your financial stability. And utility and cellphone companies may check your credit when you apply for a new account.\nIf you haven't checked your credit report in a while, now is a good time. In addition to gaining a better sense of where your finances stand, monitoring your credit report regularly can help you spot fraud and identity theft, which can be prevalent during times of crisis.\nYou're legally entitled to check your credit reports with each of the three major credit bureaus—Experian, TransUnion and Equifax—for free once a year at AnnualCreditReport.com. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you can now check your reports for free weekly through April 20, 2022. While your three reports generally will be similar, it's important to check them all to ensure they are accurate. A good strategy is to check your report from one of the three bureaus every four months so you can periodically ensure any new information that appears is correct.\nYou can also get a free credit report directly from Experian, which comes with several other benefits. These include free credit monitoring with daily alert notifications, information on what's helping and hurting your credit score, and more.\nWhen reviewing your report, if you see any accounts listed that you didn't open, you can report it swiftly before more damage is done. It's important to remember that accounts such as credit cards can appear under different names depending on the bank or other institution that manages the account. Double-check to make sure an unfamiliar provider isn't actually a legitimate account you own or have cosigned for.\nIf you find anything on your credit report you believe is inaccurate, you can dispute that information. Keep in mind that you must dispute it with each credit bureau where the inaccuracy occurs. You can start the dispute process online with Experian. END