Big Event Budgeting and Credit Monitoring: What to Know Before You Swipe

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Speaker 5 Do you know what's hiding in your credit report, Elizabeth?

Speaker 1 Yeah, a whole bunch of vanilla stuff, like my address,

Speaker 1 depending on which one, my credit score, and what I owe on my credit cards.

Speaker 5 Okay, well, that's fairly innocuous, but a lot of folks don't know what's actually on their credit report or even how to find theirs. So this episode, we're going to help them do just that.

Speaker 5 Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Sean Piles.

Speaker 1 And I'm Elizabeth Ayola. This episode, we help a couple listeners understand how to get their credit reports for free.
And guess what? We even go through Sean's credit report live.

Speaker 1 So if you've always wanted to really know Sean's business, here is your chance.

Speaker 5 I am an open book, or maybe I should say I'm an open credit report this episode.

Speaker 5 But before we get into all of that, Elizabeth, you just got back from a wonderful European vacation and I want to hear all about it, especially the money side of things.

Speaker 5 So tell us where you went and maybe how much money you spent.

Speaker 1 I went to London, which you know is home for me because I was born there. My family and friends are there.
And I also went to Paris.

Speaker 1 Now I've been traveling a lot this year and I have not really taken my son on a trip outside of the country. So I wanted to do something for him.
So we spent seven days in total in Europe.

Speaker 1 We spent two days in Paris and then the other days in London and money was spent. But the good thing is I did budget for money to be spent, but it's still painful.

Speaker 5 Okay. Yeah.
Tell us, how do you approach budgeting for a trip like this? Because I assume you're seeing family.

Speaker 5 So maybe that can offset some expenses and you're having meals at their place, maybe even staying with them. Yeah, tell us what you're thinking there, how you plan it.

Speaker 1 When I go home, I never stay at a hotel because there are 10 million places I can stay. This time I decided to stay with my friend Liz.
And yeah, you're right. I did not have to pay for accommodation.

Speaker 1 They are an amazing family who like to cook meals. So I had all the things in their house.
But I did, every time I go to Europe, I have to have my fish and chips. I have to have my pie.

Speaker 5 Are you a moshe peas person?

Speaker 1 I'm not. Ew, ew, ew.
No tomatoes.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 5 Well, more for me.

Speaker 1 Yes, the soggy tomatoes, though.

Speaker 5 Yes, with the full English. So delicious.

Speaker 1 So you love English breakfast too?

Speaker 5 I love a full English breakfast. Yes.
When I was in London in the spring, I had so many delicious vegetarian full English breakfasts because the veggie sausages are next level over there.

Speaker 1 They are. And the normal ones too.
I eat the normal ones.

Speaker 5 Okay. I need some numbers here.
How much did you spend total? If you have that number even.

Speaker 1 So I had a budget and I wasn't allowed to spend over $1,500. So I hit below that, which is nice.

Speaker 5 For seven days in Europe, that's really good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is. I had some pounds saved up.
I would say the bulk of the money was spent in Paris because I stayed at a hotel. We went up the Eiffel Tower.
We went inside of a wax museum.

Speaker 1 Can I just say I was not feeling the French food?

Speaker 1 We spent quite a bit of money on food and there was not one dish that i liked unfortunately croissants were good though i think you might have gone to the wrong places because when i was in paris i ate so well it was incredible is it the type of food or what was the issue um it was the type of food and the quality of the food so i just i just it wasn't very flavorful for me we're gonna get some hate mail okay i'm expecting our inbox to blow up after this well i was gonna say listeners if you guys have any recommendations in case i go back um you guys can send me but i'm i'm not i was very underwhelmed and so is my son oh oh yes so Elizabeth did you happen to come home with any sort of royal jewels maybe some that the police might be looking for ah I didn't and unfortunately I didn't come across the robbers either so robbers if you're still out there the police are looking for you I did however come back with some shot glasses that's a solid souvenir I personally love fridge magnets everywhere I go I get a little fridge magnet and some people love shot glasses so there you go There we go.

Speaker 5 Well, we are so happy to have you back because we missed you around here. So welcome.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I missed you guys too.
Happy to be back. All right, Sean, now that I've told you my business about my trip, you have a trip that's coming up.
Your honeymoon and your wedding's coming up.

Speaker 5 Yes, they're both coming up in, by the time this goes live, less than two weeks, which is bananas. And so, yeah, I'm flying down to San Francisco for my wedding.

Speaker 5 And then two days after I get married, Garrett and I, as newlywedded husbands, are flying off to Japan. And we're going to be there for about two, two and a half weeks.

Speaker 5 And then we're going to Seoul, South Korea, and we'll be there for just a little under a week.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 1 Well, we're invested. And when I say we, I mean me and the listeners, because you have been talking about this wedding for months now.
You also did tell us that you blew up your budget.

Speaker 1 So we're going to start there before we get into all your wonderful travels. So have you blown up your budget anymore since we last discussed?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I did. My

Speaker 5 budget's in pieces all over a spreadsheet that I created. I'm about $6,000 over budget right now, but I'm still under $20,000 for the whole wedding.

Speaker 5 A lot of the budgetness of it all comes from gold being really expensive and it turns out my taste being really expensive because my suit was about three times as much as I thought I was going to spend on it.

Speaker 1 Isn't that something when you realize you're bougie and that you're more expensive than you thought you were?

Speaker 5 You know, I knew this about myself and it's not even intentional. I'm not going into this place thinking I want the most expensive fabric for my suit.

Speaker 5 I just find this fabric that I find beautiful and turns out it's the most expensive one on the rack. But I can't not have it because guess what?

Speaker 5 It's my wedding and I'm going to wear this suit all night long and it's going to look so good.

Speaker 1 And because you deserve it. And that's absolutely girl math as well.

Speaker 5 So thank you. It's not just girl math.
It's gay husband math. And that's where I am right now.

Speaker 1 I love it. Okay.
So you're $6,000 over budget. But now tell us why you've gone so much over.
So you said your suit was your honeymoon. Did your honeymoon have anything to do with it?

Speaker 1 I know you've not gone on the honeymoon yet.

Speaker 5 The honeymoon is a whole separate category from my wedding budget. That's how I'm girl math.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So the honeymoon so far is about $9,000.
And I was hoping to spend around $20,000 on both my wedding and my honeymoon.

Speaker 5 But once I saw how much they were each going to cost, I decided to split out the expense of each. And then also I had Garrett.

Speaker 5 and I ask our parents for some money too, because we were kind of bootstrapping our wedding savings.

Speaker 5 And at a certain point, we were like, what's having middle-class parents for if not to ask them for some money? So we each got about $5,000.

Speaker 5 and that additional 10K has made all of this so much more feasible. But yeah, I've just been trying to allocate certain expenses for like travel and for the hotels and for restaurants.

Speaker 5 And also now we're getting money coming in from our registry, which is just basically different cash funds for different experiences. So thank you, dear friends and family, for giving us that cash.

Speaker 5 That'll make all of this so much more feasible.

Speaker 1 What a beautiful love fest. All these monies coming from all over the place.
Hey, universe, if I get married again, I need all of these monies coming from all the places too.

Speaker 1 So I have some more questions. So $9,000 on a vacation.
I've never spent that much on a vacation, but it is your honeymoon. So now I need to know.
I know the tickets were pretty expensive.

Speaker 1 Give us a breakdown of where this $9,000 is going.

Speaker 5 Okay. You know, I actually have my spreadsheet pulled up on my screen right in front of me.
So let me look at it. One second, one second.

Speaker 5 So most of the expense is flights to Japan. It's like almost $2,300 for Garrett and I's flights out.
And then beyond that, a lot of it's just lodging because some of the hotels are really expensive.

Speaker 5 Kyoto was much more expensive than I was expecting. Same with this Anson, which is like a spa-type hotel.
We're spending a few nights at a pretty luxurious one.

Speaker 5 And we were looking at different rates of different packages.

Speaker 5 And at a certain point, we were like, well, we might as well just spend a few hundred dollars more to have a really nice experience since it is our honeymoon. A few decisions like that.

Speaker 5 And guess what? We're spending a grand more overall on everything.

Speaker 5 So right now, my running total is $8,836.

Speaker 5 And this doesn't include food or souvenirs of which I'm going to be buying a lot. So, I think probably in total, we'll end up spending maybe around

Speaker 5 $12,000 between both of us over the course of, again, it's three weeks basically that we're going to be traveling. So, that's part of why it's so expensive is we're just gone for so long.

Speaker 5 I've never traveled for such an extended period of time. I think at certain points, I might need to spend money on like a spa day for my mental health so I can recharge.

Speaker 5 I'm trying to be really like gentle with myself because I know it's going to be like pretty tiring, but I think it's all well worth it because what a great way to kick off our marriage, just having this great adventure together.

Speaker 1 I think so. And I was also going to say, you know, it sounds like you guys may be bougie about hotels as well, which is something I'm bougie about.

Speaker 1 So I think when you're budgeting for a vacation, you can't necessarily, depend on your budget, be bougie about everything.

Speaker 1 So you have to have like a priority list on I'm willing to spend this amount on this, and then I'm willing to be cheap in these areas in order to stay within budget. So is that what you have to do?

Speaker 5 100%. In part because Garrett is a tall guy.
He's like 6'4 and

Speaker 5 I'm not quite as tall, but we want to be comfortable when we sleep. So that meant finding hotels that had king-size beds.
And that's not really easy to come by in Japan.

Speaker 5 It limited our options pretty severely. And that ended up meaning we spent more money on our hotels.
But guess what?

Speaker 5 After walking 20,000 steps a day, we're going to be really grateful to have that extra space to sleep.

Speaker 1 You sure are. You sure are.
Well, I'm excited for you. And I can't wait to hear when you get back about all you've been going on on, all your travels.

Speaker 1 But I guess I have one parting question before we give you a warm and hearty send-off, which is, in retrospect, since you're kind of almost done with the major expenses, is there anything that you would change about how you budgeted for your wedding?

Speaker 5 I think I would have been less strict and hard on myself going into it, especially when I began to go over budget. I probably had an unrealistic understanding of just how expensive weddings are.

Speaker 5 We all know that weddings are expensive, but when it's your own money, you think, oh, I'm not going to spend that much. At least I didn't think that.

Speaker 5 And then when I began to go over, it just, I felt bad and I began kind of making myself feel guilty.

Speaker 5 And then at a certain point, I just kind of gave into it and thought, look, I'm still being mindful. I'm not being excessive, but these things are just expensive.
So make it what you want it to be.

Speaker 5 You have the money saved. You have money from your parents.
You're okay. Don't beat yourself up over it.

Speaker 5 So that's what I would go back and tell myself from two months ago when I was going through this myself.

Speaker 1 No, that's such a beautiful and heartfelt message because, yeah, back to, I guess, money values and being kind to yourself. You know, money is there to be spent.

Speaker 1 And this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you're going to have.

Speaker 1 And you should be able to look back and say, you know, the money I worked hard for, I was able to use it to cultivate this beautiful, joyful experience.

Speaker 1 So I'm happy that you're being kinder to yourself.

Speaker 5 Thank you for enabling my spending because it's so fun to do once I stop beating myself up for it.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm always going to give into temptation for a good time. So I'm here to enable you in a nerdy way, of course.

Speaker 5 Of course. Well, if you want to follow my travels, Elizabeth, or anyone listening, you can just stalk me on Instagram.
My handle is Sean triple underscore piles.

Speaker 1 Right. Some of us will still be at work.

Speaker 5 Yes, you'll be at work. And that's one thing I want to mention too.
Elizabeth will still be here turning out some amazing content. I can't wait to hear what you're making when I'm gone.

Speaker 1 Oh, thank you. Pressure much.
So listener, Sean won't be here, but you still listen to me, okay?

Speaker 5 Please still. And also, I'll still kind of be here because we've been recording a few things ahead of time just to get everyone ready.

Speaker 5 But Elizabeth and some guest nerds have some really special content in the works, and we can't wait for you guys to hear it.

Speaker 1 Well, thanks for the update, Sean. In a moment, we're going to go deep into credit reports, including what's on Sean's.

Speaker 5 But before we get into that, listeners, a reminder to send us your money questions.

Speaker 5 Maybe you're wondering the best way to save up for your own wedding, or you see the holidays rapidly approaching and are wondering about how to get the best prices on everything from airfare to lodging to presents.

Speaker 1 Whatever your money question, we the nerds are here to help you. So leave us a voicemail or text us on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373.
That's 901-730-N-E-R-D.

Speaker 5 Or email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com. Okay, let's get to this episode's money question.
That's up next. Stay with us.

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Speaker 5 We're back and answering your money questions to help you make smarter financial decisions. This episode, we have a couple of questions about how to access your credit reports and credit scores.

Speaker 1 And to help us answer these listener questions on this episode of the podcast, we're joined by friend of the pod, our homie and a fan favorite, Amanda Barroso.

Speaker 3 Amanda, welcome back.

Speaker 7 Listen, with that kind of introduction, I was not prepared for that. Thank you for having me back.

Speaker 5 We need some sirens to go off whenever we introduce you, Amanda.

Speaker 7 It's always fun to be here with you guys.

Speaker 5 All right, well, let's get to the first question. It comes from Montgomery, who sent us an email.
Here it is.

Speaker 5 Hello, I've been listening to your podcast for several months now, and I've heard about credit card users making sure to use their one free credit report from one of the big credit reporters, like Equifax, et cetera.

Speaker 5 I've recently got a credit card, making sure to pay it off each month and only only spend less than 30% of the available credit, which isn't a problem.

Speaker 5 Anyway, I wanted to know how to access those free reports, what information I will need to have for requesting such information, and any other information related to getting that credit report.

Speaker 5 Greatly appreciated. Montgomery.

Speaker 1 All right, Amanda, let's start with the basics. Let's start simple.
What's the best way for people to get their credit reports?

Speaker 7 So everyone is able to get free weekly credit reports from each major credit bureau. So that's Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.

Speaker 7 if you use this website annualcreditreport.com now when you go there it looks a little outdated okay but it that's the right

Speaker 7 it looks like it's from 2005 you might think you're being scammed but we we are not scamming you here at nerd wallet right we do not we do not fall for scams so if you go through that website you'll have to enter your name your address your social security number and Because that's all highly confidential information, just really important to make sure you're in the right place.

Speaker 5 And one more time, it is annualcreditreport.com.

Speaker 7 Absolutely right.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 1 What information do people need to have on hand to get their credit reports through annualcreditreport.com?

Speaker 7 You'll need your name, your current mailing address, your email, and a phone number. If for some reason they can't verify your identity, like they're going to try to send you a text or an email.

Speaker 7 And if that doesn't come for some reason, sometimes you know it's slow. You'll have to answer some more in-depth questions to be verified.
So this happened to me recently.

Speaker 7 And they asked me questions like, which company has your mortgage or which company has your auto loan and what those rough payment amounts are. So those are some pretty in the weeds questions.

Speaker 7 But hey, if you're paying your bills on time every month, you will know those answers.

Speaker 5 Amanda, there are a lot of places where credit card users can get their credit scores, including through their own credit card issuers' online portals.

Speaker 5 Like when you log into your credit card account, you'll have no doubt seen these promotions for accessing your credit scores from the credit card issuer.

Speaker 5 And I think this is a nice free perk, but there's part of me that views this as a secondary source, while the credit bureaus or annualcreditreport.com are a primary source. Do you agree with that?

Speaker 5 And how do you view the info that you get from a credit card issuer versus straight from the credit bureau?

Speaker 7 I see what you're saying here. And in my mind, they're all kind of fair game.
It's not always true that you'll get your credit score as part of your credit report.

Speaker 7 Oftentimes, those two things are totally separate.

Speaker 7 Your credit score is calculated using the information from your credit reports, but those calculations are made by FICO and VantageScore, so totally separate from the credit bureaus.

Speaker 7 I don't think that there's anything wrong with using a bank or other personal finance app or anything to get your credit score. It's a source that you can use to check in.

Speaker 7 A lot of times those are convenient. Like I know for me, I tend to rely on my bank app for my credit score because I'm regularly popping in to pay bills to sort of just manage my money.

Speaker 7 And the thing thing is, you're only maybe getting one score of many, but at least you're kind of managing it.

Speaker 5 And most likely the user interface is a little bit better on the banking apps versus annualcreditreport.com, which again, as we said, is old looking.

Speaker 7 Now, I totally understand the impulse to get your information from reliable secondary sources.

Speaker 7 The only other thing to consider is that, and I mentioned this, your bank or credit card app likely only provides one kind of score. So either a vantage score or a FICO score.

Speaker 7 So you'll need another place to look to get the other score. In my experience, FICO is the most widely used credit score, but it's the hardest to find.
And often you have to pay to get it.

Speaker 7 A lot of the times when you're getting a free score, it's a vantage score. Not always, but a lot of times.

Speaker 7 So just kind of next time you're popping in one of those apps, pay attention to which credit score it is and see if you can find the other one for free. It's like a challenge.

Speaker 5 Even though you might have to pay for a FICO score, I would maybe discourage people from doing that because there's likely not going to be a huge spread between your vantage score and your FICO score.

Speaker 7 Absolutely right.

Speaker 5 Okay. So getting your credit report and your score is just one part of this process.
Actually understanding what's on it and knowing how to read your credit reports is a pretty different experience.

Speaker 5 So we're going to do a little live demonstration right here on the episode where we go through my experient credit report on the podcast.

Speaker 5 And by the way, we've also got an article on nerdwallet.com that will take you step by step through the process of reading a credit report. And we'll link to that in the show notes.

Speaker 5 But back to my credit report. Amanda, Elizabeth, you should have copies of my Experian credit report.
So let's go through it and see what we have here.

Speaker 7 This feels illegal.

Speaker 5 I know, but I'm giving you consent to look at my personal information. And there's nothing like my social security number on here, just my debts and my various addresses.

Speaker 5 But looking at it, I mean, it starts out with my FICO score. I got this for free by going to the Experian's website and logging in.
So they have that.

Speaker 5 Again, didn't pay for it, even though they tried to get me to pay for it, which I'll get to in a little bit.

Speaker 5 And then what's kind of interesting is that it starts by showing that I have 12 open accounts and my total balances are $240,000, roughly, which sounds like a lot of debt until you remember that that includes my mortgage, which is the bulk of it.

Speaker 5 And then it has different credit card accounts listed, the balances, and the date that the balances were updated.

Speaker 5 And then scrolling through, one thing that really stands out to me are all of of the ads. Like there are a number of different accounts that they're trying to get me to sign up for.

Speaker 5 And that is a little bit icky to me. But then going down, I see my mortgage here.

Speaker 5 It wants me to unlock my home's potential, likely by getting some sort of debt product from them or one of their partners. It has my student loans.

Speaker 5 It says that I have zero in collections, which is great. And this is what I thought.

Speaker 5 Two inquiries into my credit reports because I recently applied for a credit card. And it says that my credit file is unlocked.

Speaker 5 And Amanda, when we had you on the podcast a few weeks back, we talked about credit locks, which are sort of the shadier, less secure version of a credit freeze.

Speaker 5 My credit is frozen, but notably, it doesn't tell me that on my credit report, which I find really sketchy and annoying.

Speaker 7 Okay, you got this credit report by going to Experian, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Okay, I would love for you to go get it through annualcreditreport.com and see if it looks any different.

Speaker 7 Because in preparation for this episode, I got my three credit reports from annualcreditreport.com and they looked a little bit different. They were really long.
And

Speaker 7 this has like hard inquiries, right? Like where you've applied for a credit product or a loan product and they've inquired on your credit.

Speaker 7 The ones that I pulled for myself had listed all the soft inquiries.

Speaker 7 So like just people who were like trying to send me a credit card offer in the mail who like wanted to peek at my credit to see if I

Speaker 7 don't like that yeah so it was a little more detailed but they also showed and I'm trying to remember because I pulled all three it did say that my credit was frozen so I'm wondering if there's some scammy stuff going sneaky stuff going on here to make you feel like your credit is not secure by not by not putting that it's frozen but saying oh my gosh it's unlocked you just purchase this right right then everything will be secure that's interesting huh that is really interesting yeah because I've also viewed my credit report through annualcreditreport.com and it looks like some sort of legal document you would have received in 1993.

Speaker 7 Absolutely. I mean, but it's on brand.
It's on brand. Like, if that's the website, then that, of course, is what the actual finished product needs to look like, right?

Speaker 1 Well, Sean, I think one thing that stands out to me about your credit report here is it looks like AI.

Speaker 5 What do you mean?

Speaker 1 There's nothing wrong on your report. So are you sure this is a genuine one, or did you put this in AI?

Speaker 5 You know, I'm just that good. I just have such stellar credit habits that there's nothing wrong.
I'm doing a phenomenal job.

Speaker 1 You absolutely are. And you have to tell us how you are keeping your credit usage at 2%, Sean.
What are you doing?

Speaker 5 Well, it's at 2% because if you look at my list of credit lines, you'll see that my total available credit is a whopping $94,000.

Speaker 5 So 2% of that isn't a lot of money. It's also a little scary that I have access to that much credit.
One thing I think about a lot is that it's just way too easy to get into debt in this country.

Speaker 5 And I think having this massive credit limit across various credit cards really speaks to that.

Speaker 5 So yeah, I still have balances that are around $3,000 total of this payment period as of the dates that the balances were updated on my credit report. That's not nothing.

Speaker 5 I mean, I paid it off and I pay off my balances on a basically weekly basis, but I just am accruing a small amount of credit utilization based on the vast amount of credit that I have available.

Speaker 7 But even still, it's saying add to your $94,000 credit limit. You could improve your credit usage and increase your FICO score with a new car.

Speaker 1 Crazy, crazy.

Speaker 7 So like there's a certain level of

Speaker 7 self-protectionism that you need to have when you're reading these credit reports. Just kind of know that like, look, these are businesses.
There's no other alternative.

Speaker 7 We need them to provide this information. There's no other way to get it, but they're also selling you products and services.
So just be a little skeptical

Speaker 7 of those offers that are embedded in these reports.

Speaker 5 And so as much as you are looking to your credit report to make sure that everything is what you think it should be in terms of your credit files and your credit score, you need to be aware that these credit bureaus have ulterior motives too.

Speaker 5 So I'm thinking we might also want to talk about some red flags that people might want to look out for on their credit reports. What do you think people should really be looking for here?

Speaker 1 Something I will say, which happened to me, I think a couple of years ago, was that there was a mix-up in identities.

Speaker 1 So me and my mother have similar names and they had some of my mom's credit history on my credit report. So I had to call to make sure that they separated the two.

Speaker 1 So just make sure that you don't have, you know, anyone else's information on your credit report or maybe someone in your family and they're not mixing up your information.

Speaker 5 And you have an uncommon name, Elizabeth. Like how many John Smiths have other John Smiths information on their credit reports?

Speaker 1 I know. Well, my mom, I guess she just loved me so much.
And, you know, so she named me the same name as her, you know, so our middle names are just different.

Speaker 7 I mean, for me, one of the first things that I looked for, I mean, I wanted to make sure that I recognized all of the names of the accounts. And sometimes they're not always intuitive.

Speaker 7 Like, what is this? I had to type it in. And, oh, okay, I know what that card is or what that account is.
But I just want to make sure I know what all of those are. I also want to make sure that...

Speaker 7 I'm scrolling down and like, do I have a collections against me? Okay, whoof, no.

Speaker 7 Are there any public records?

Speaker 1 Like, that's where bankruptcies would appear.

Speaker 7 Other sort of really damaging things to your credit would appear in that section. So, just like scrolling down and monitoring, I need to know what's going on here.

Speaker 7 If there is information in those sections and it does, it's not related to your activity. That again could be a sign of identity theft or fraud.
So, you want to monitor that as well.

Speaker 7 The one thing that I don't think you should worry about is that

Speaker 7 if your maiden name appears, or if they only have an employer from 10 years ago. I mean, like I said, I pulled all three of mine.
None of them were updated in terms of my employer.

Speaker 7 Only one of them, one of my reports had my employer and it was a company I worked for for one summer in 2007. So again, employers don't report to credit bureaus.
Lenders do.

Speaker 7 So that doesn't affect your score at all. So here's the thing.

Speaker 7 If you've gone through these reports, you're holding up your magnifying glass, you're making sure everything checks out, and you find an error.

Speaker 7 You'll want to first check to see if that error exists on the other two credit reports, then start the dispute process with the bureaus where that mistake is being reported to.

Speaker 7 So if it's, it could only be one credit report. So let's say it only appears on your Experian report.
Great, less work for you. You just have to dispute with Experian.

Speaker 7 If it shows up on all three, okay, you've got three different dispute processes to go through, but that's okay. You're going to want to do do that quickly.
You can do it online.

Speaker 7 You can do it by phone or by mail. The good news is that we have step-by-step guides on how to go through the process with each bureau.
We're going to link to that in the episode description.

Speaker 7 So if you find yourself in that spot, you'll know exactly where to go.

Speaker 1 Now let's scurry along to our second listener's question, which comes from Peter, who sent us an email. Hi, nerds, long time listener, first time question asker.

Speaker 1 Thank you for all you do to help people understand how to have a healthy relationship with their finances.

Speaker 1 I recently logged into the websites of the three major credit bureaus, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax, using logins I've had for years to easily freeze and unfreeze my credit.

Speaker 1 On all three sites, I noticed they want me to upgrade my account in order to see credit details, including my credit score. On one site, I could pay 99 cents to see my credit score.

Speaker 1 On another, they said I had a legal right to see my credit report, but didn't show any score. And on the third, I couldn't really see anything without upgrading my membership.
What's going on here?

Speaker 1 Am I crazy? Or did I used to be able to get a free credit report from each, inclusive of my score, once a year? And wasn't this mandated by law? Thanks for any light you can shed on this, Peter.

Speaker 5 Okay, so Peter's question came in as I was working on this episode, and I'm really glad that it did because it gets to one of my biggest pet peeves in the personal finance space, which is that in my humble opinion, credit bureaus are honestly not that much better than glorified scammers who try to nickel nickel and dime us at every opportunity.

Speaker 5 And Amanda, again, like I mentioned before, when we had you on to talk about credit locks and credit freezes, we ran into the same issue.

Speaker 5 And it seems like you can't really try to access your credit reports through one of the main bureaus without them trying to push some sort of financial product on you.

Speaker 5 So can you talk us through what is going on here? Because we all should be able to view our credit scores for free, correct?

Speaker 7 You should be able to view your credit reports for free.

Speaker 7 So I think one of the big things about this question is a conflation between credit scores and credit reports because they're two different things and they're produced by two groups or two sets of financial institutions.

Speaker 7 Everybody has a legal right to see their credit reports for free using that Wonkiel website, annualcreditreport.com. And your credit report might but doesn't always have your credit score on it.

Speaker 7 Your credit scores are calculated using that information from the credit reports by FICO FICO and VantageScore.

Speaker 7 And those show up in a variety of places for free and sometimes behind some kind of a paywall. So we talked about your banking app.
We talked about free personal finance apps.

Speaker 7 NerdWallet, for example, offers a free score and a free credit report. So there are places to get that.

Speaker 7 But to say that you're mandated by law to see your score, no, but you are legally mandated to get access to free credit reports.

Speaker 5 And at this point, credit scores are so ubiquitous. You can turn any corner in a banking app and then, boom, there it is.

Speaker 7 I think it's really important that we kind of hold each of those in one hand, right? They're related.

Speaker 7 They're very much related, but they're separate products or separate pieces of information that are part of your larger financial picture.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's important to clarify.

Speaker 7 Why not make it more complicated? It's to say that you have a couple scores.

Speaker 7 You have a FICO score, you have a vantage score, you have a FICO Auto score, there's a Vantage score 3.0, there's a FICO 10T.

Speaker 1 I'm already confused.

Speaker 3 My head is spinning. Right.

Speaker 5 But for most people, they don't need to worry about those, right? Because something that people forget is that credit scores were not intended for us to ever view them originally.

Speaker 5 They were intended for lenders to see.

Speaker 7 Just winnow it down to the basics. Find your FICO score and your Vantage score.
Likely they're the most two most popular scoring versions, right?

Speaker 7 Like FICO is releasing, oh, we have a new calculation every couple years, right?

Speaker 7 But most likely the ones that you can find on your bank app or on a personal finance app are the most widely used versions. And they're probably not too dissimilar from one another.

Speaker 1 Well, I think this is a good segue to another part of Peter's question. They asked if it's legally mandated that we can access our credit reports, including our credit scores annually.

Speaker 1 I know you've touched on it, but can you walk us through the law itself, Amanda?

Speaker 7 So free credit reports are a legal right. Free credit scores are not, except in a few circumstances, which I'll talk about in a second.

Speaker 7 The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you the right to see what's in your credit reports. Before the pandemic, you could only request a credit report from each bureau once a year for free.

Speaker 7 But during the pandemic, the bureaus began offering free weekly credit reports. And in 2023, they made this a permanent benefit.
So that was, hey, a silver lining of the pandemic, shall we say?

Speaker 7 So a minute ago, I mentioned that there are a few special circumstances where you can get additional free credit reports.

Speaker 7 And those include like if you place a fraud alert, if you're on public welfare assistance, or if you're unemployed and you're planning on applying for a job within 60 days, that gives you a chance to clean up your credit report.

Speaker 7 If you've had a hardship, you can craft a statement that you, you know, if your employer, you suspect they might inquire about that. It gives you time to prepare.

Speaker 7 If you've been denied credit, you're also entitled to a free credit report from the credit reporting company that was identified in the notice.

Speaker 7 So those are some special circumstances where you can get an additional one on top of those free weekly ones. You don't automatically get your credit score for free, at least not by law.

Speaker 7 The only time a lender has to give it to you is if you're turned down for credit or offered worse terms.

Speaker 7 So you'll get what's called an adverse action notice and your score will be included as part of that. And you can always buy your score straight from the credit bureaus or from FICO or Vantage Score.

Speaker 1 So in summary, guys, you do not need to pay to get your credit report or your credit score.

Speaker 1 Are there any specific nerdy websites or nerdy apps that you want to plug that can show people their credit information for free, Amanda?

Speaker 7 I'd be doing us a disservice if I didn't mention NerdWallet. NerdWallet offers a free vantage score 3.0 and a free transunion credit report.

Speaker 7 So if you're out there, you're listening, you now have one place you can turn for a reliable free option to get this important financial information.

Speaker 5 All right. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for coming on and breaking all this down for us because it seems simple, but it can get really confusing really quickly.

Speaker 5 And folks need a good reminder that you don't have to pay for this stuff.

Speaker 7 Absolutely. And Sean, you know, thanks for giving us a window into your financial life.
I mean, squeaky clean.

Speaker 7 I'm always happy to brag about my perfect credit report.

Speaker 5 And you know, we didn't mention, we said that my credit score is on here, but I just want to really lay it out there. My credit score as of the date I pulled this report was 831.

Speaker 1 It's AI.

Speaker 3 All right. Thanks for having.

Speaker 7 Thanks for coming on, Matt.

Speaker 3 I'm kidding. Amanda's rolling her eyes.

Speaker 7 You know, no, really and truly, let's get it on the record. Okay, we'll check back in a couple months after your honeymoon and we'll see what that is.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah, that usage is about to spike up.

Speaker 3 I can see it now.

Speaker 5 I'm going to enjoy every swipe or tap.

Speaker 3 Good, good.

Speaker 2 As you should.

Speaker 5 All right. Well, that's all we have for this episode.
Remember, listener, that we are here to answer your money questions. So turn to the nerds and call or test us your questions at 901-730-6373.

Speaker 5 That's 901-730-N-E-R-D.

Speaker 5 You can also email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com.

Speaker 1 And we want you to join us next time to hear about how to manage your finances when you budget differently than your partner.

Speaker 1 Follow Smart Money on your favorite podcast app that includes Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeartRadio to automatically download new episodes.

Speaker 5 Here's our brief disclaimer. We are not your financial or investment advisors.

Speaker 5 This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances.

Speaker 1 This episode is produced by Tess Wiglin. Hilary Georgie helped with editing.
Nick Kersemi mixed our audio. Huge big thank you to Nerd Wallets editors for all of their help.

Speaker 5 And with that said, until next time, turn to the nerds.

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