In the last post I began the story of my divorce and how the actual process of it had so much more than an emotional impact on my life. In fact, there were significant financial impacts for which I was not at all prepared and following the finalizing of my divorce I had to seek professional guidance in getting myself back on track in this regard. We set to work disentangling my finances from that of my ex-husband and creating a plan that would help to rebuild my credit.

I wanted to have some sort of benchmark that would allow me see my incremental progress and that’s when I learned about free credit reports. As I learned in my research, we are all entitled to free credit reports. As consumers we are subject to financial information being gathered about us from the three credit bureaus – Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. These three credit bureaus each compile a credit report and when a potential lender is determining whether or not to extend us a line of credit they will turn to the credit bureaus for information to help them make their decision. The information on our credit report will speak to our creditworthiness and let potential lenders know if we are a good credit risk or not.

As I began to take steps to rebuild my creditworthiness I wanted to know that the credit bureaus were noticing and that it was reflected on my credit report. As it turned out I had the right to order a free credit report from each of the credit bureaus once every 12 months and so I made it my business to do just that – ordering a free credit report from each of credit bureau every three months and watching my progress take hold. This small step gave me hope as it showed the positive changes in my life – right there in black and white.

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