Do you know how your credit score is doing?

Most people have never actually checked their credit score themselves. They either go along with some vague idea of how good or bad their credit is, or they only know that they're either accepted or declined when applying for any kind of credit.

Part of a good debt reduction plan is knowing your credit score. This will help you to understand what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. Plus, if there are any errors on your credit report that are hurting your score you can get them corrected.

There are three national credit reporting agencies that virtually all lenders use to check your credit worthiness: Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. You are legally allowed to request one free copy of your credit report from each of them every 12 months.

You can request your reports by calling 1-877-FACT-ACT or from www.annualcreditreport.com.

Keep in mind that the reports you order through that phone number or website are free. There are lots of websites offering to get you free credit reports, but they also want to sell you credit report monitoring and other services.

Unless you want to get your reports more often than every 12 months, there's no need to use any other website than that one.