Credit Myth: Checking my credit report will hurt my score.

Accessing your credit profile will not hurt your credit score, it won’t even be reflected on your report.  In fact, you are encouraged to access your credit profile on a regular basis to fight fraud and identity theft.  Regularly checking your report will also help you correct any mistakes quickly so that your score is not negatively impacted by inaccurate information.  Generally, the longer inaccurate information remains on your report or the more time that passes before you realize your identity has been compromised the longer and more costly it is to make it right.

You can check you report for free at www.annualcreditreport.com.  Unfortunately, there isn’t anywhere to get the scores for free but they can be accessed from this site.  Other people advertising “free” credit reports are trying to sell you something¹, usually a subscription into a credit monitoring service.  You can sign up for monitoring service directly from the bureaus, usually with a smaller charge and more reliability.

When you check your credit report it is considered a soft inquiry².  When a lender or financial institution accesses your credit profile it is considered a hard inquiry³ and having too many hard inquiries could negatively impact your score.  The number of hard inquiries from the past 12 months is noted on the report and these inquiries are the ones impacting your scores.  It is a good idea to limit the number of inquiries into your credit⁴ especially if you anticipate applying for a mortgage loan in the next year⁵.

1. I know, I think the tune is catchy too.
2. No, that free T-shirt isn’t worth it!
3. Your insurance agent is off the hook – soft inquiry.
4. Your cell phone and dish TV companies are not off the hook – hard inquiries.
5. And we never know what tomorrow holds, so you should maybe always
    assume you will be, but you probably figured I’d say that didn’t you?

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