Thanks to the economic impact of COVID-19, some people are paying credit card bills and other obligations late. Or even missing them altogether, which can put a major hurt on your credit score.
Coronavirus-related scams are on the rise, and identity theft is a big concern since so many people have been shopping online. The Federal Trade Commission fielded four times more fraud claims in the first few weeks of April than in the previous quarter combined.
We’re all supposed to check our credit reports every four months, through annual free reports from the big three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion). But for the next nine months, you can check it every week.
Those bureaus have teamed up to provide free weekly reports through AnnualCreditReport.com. It’s a collective response to COVID-19, whose financial upheaval has led to those late/missed payments, and it continues through April 21, 2021.
However, you don’t have to be struggling financially to want to check your credit report. It’s always a good idea to make sure there’s nothing weird on your report – and it’s not always fraud-related. Incorrectly entered info, such as transposed digits in a Social Security number, can lead to errors.
For example, one time when I checked the report seemed to think that I worked at a credit union in the southeastern United States. Nope, that wasn’t me.
Note: A credit report is not the same as your credit score. But this new paradigm offers help with that, too.
