Free Credit Report and Free Credit Score

Every U.S consumer is entitled to get a copy of his or her free credit report from all the three major credit reporting agencies in the country; namely; Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union once in a year under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) enforced by the Federal Government.
The basic objective of such provisions for providing each consumer with a copy of credit reports is prevention of identity theft as well as regulating the actions of the lenders and credit reporting bureaus. The report serves another very important purpose as it keeps the consumer informed about his or her financial status.
Another objective of providing a copy of a report free of cost to consumers is that the consumer will know that the entries made in his or her record is correct and in case any mistake is detected the consumer will have the scope to challenge and get it rectified.
These reports and scores play an important part in shaping the financial life of a consumer since most financial agencies, and lenders will have a look at their report and credit score of the consumer concerned before approving any financial assistance. While people with good credit scores will find getting financial assistance easier, the reverse happens in case of those with bad credit scores. Getting a copy of credit sheet, therefore, a useful purpose for the consumer interests.
You can obtain a copy of your free report by logging onto and applying through the only federally approved credit reporting agency, annualcreditreport.com. Other agencies that claim to offer free credit scores do not actually give them freely as there are multiple associated costs and fees involved. That is why every other agency has to make the mandatory declaration in their ads or website that the consumers can get their copy of the report from the federally approved agency annualcreditreport.com.
Like credit reports, the credit scores of any consumer are also very important. In fact, the credibility of the consumer is assessed by the money lending agencies based on their credit scores. Hence getting one's score without paying anything could come up very handy for the consumers. Unfortunately, there is no provision in the FCRA or any complementary legislation for the consumers to get such free credit scores.
While there are different types of credit scoring, Vantage scores and others; the most widely used and well known scoring system is the FICO (Fair Isaac Corporation) scores. But FICO scores are not available free of cost anywhere.
A round about way of getting such a asking the lender about your score. When you apply for a loan, in all probabilities, the lender will look forward to your credit score from one of the credit reporting bureaus to assess your loan credibility. In such case, you can learn about your scores from them without having to pay anything for it.
And if after getting that score if you feel it is abnormally low or there is something wrong about it, you can always go back to your report that you got from the agencies and assess the scores calculated by the reporting bureau assuming it and file complaint if they do not match accurately.