There are a handful of purchases you will make throughout your life that are so much more than your basic, everyday purchases. It’s not like going to the grocery store or even buying a larger item like a television or video game system. Major purchases such as a car or a home will impact your financial situation for years, if not decades. Unless you’re able to pay cash entirely for the purchase you will buy the item on credit, usually in the form of a mortgage or a car loan In order to determine your ability to pay these loans back, banks and other financial institutions will pull your credit report and look over not only your credit score, but a number of other specifics involved with your report. Now, you may believe you know what’s on your report, and you can swear you’ve paid everything on time and never missed a payment, but you never know what might be sitting on your report. The last thing you want is for something unexpected to pop up. Here are a handful of reasons why you absolutely need to take advantage of a free credit score check prior to any major purchases.
There can be mistakes
You might be surprised as to how often there are mistakes on a credit report. You might have paid off a certain loan and yet the lender could not have reported it to the credit bureaus. It might show you have an outstanding balance on one particular loan or that you have missed a payment, and yet you know all of this isn’t true. These are instances that can end up hurting your credit score. Hurting your credit score can do anything from forcing you to pay a higher interest rate, all the way to preventing you from qualifying for the loan. So it is very much possible to miss out on buying a house because of someone else’s clerical error. The best way to prevent this from happening is to take advantage of a free credit score check and find out if there are any issues lingering on your credit report that you don’t know about.
Discover when your lenders report and update information
As you might know, the more you pay down your loans and credit cards the better off your credit report is. Most of your credit reports will report this information on a monthly basis, but there are other services providers that, despite requiring monthly payments, don’t actually update the information on a monthly basis. For example, you might want to apply for a mortgage, but you are trying to pay down your car loan first. So you might think it’s a good idea to apply for the mortgage after making a car payment. Theoretically, that sounds good, but your auto lender might not report the reduction in what you owe for another 60 or even 90 days.
By checking your credit report you will find this out. This way, you will know if you should just go ahead and apply for the additional loan, or if you should wait a few more weeks so you can take advantage of the potential bump with your credit score.
Forgotten issues
There’s also the possibility that there are issues within your credit report that you have completely forgotten about. Maybe there is an old gym membership you forgot to cancel, haven’t been paying, and it’s been hindering your report for years now. Or there might be a missed payment or collection out there for a bill you totally forgot about. All of these are issues you might not even remember. With a free credit check, you can find out what you need to correct.
Take Advantage Of A Free Credit Score Check
Before you make any kind of major financial purchases in the coming months you will want to double-check your credit score. Knowing what is on it will help you determine if there are errors on your report or if you should wait a few weeks or months before applying. Even a small credit score bump can be all the difference between securing a quality loan or not even applying for one.