Your credit score hurts more than your credit

At a party this week, I was chatting with a friend. She relayed to me a story regarding her credit which serves as a good cautionary tale to all, the gist of which is this: your credit score can affect more than just your the rate on your cards.

You see, companies have figured out that FICO scores are good predictors of who will pay their bills on time. Insurance companies have started giving discounts to customers with higher scores on the notion that they will pay on time and are generally more responsible. Actuarial data tend to support this. Of course, we could easily look at it the other way: that insurance companies penalize those with lower scores by raising their premium.

Credit Reports

Sing it with me, you know the words:

"F-R-E-E that spells free, credit report dot com, baby..."

The commercials are catchy, quirky and make a good point- check your credit reports or you won't discover things that may negatively impact your score. So is freecreditreport.com the place to do this?