Have you been affected by the curse of the credit reports?  If you are not sure this is how to tell.  The bank will not give you a loan on that wonderful house you want.  The car dealership won't give you the advertised rate on the car you were going to buy.  The Bio-tech company won't give you a job because you are seen as a security risk.  The government won't issue you the license you need to start your new business because they don't trust you.  The list could go on but you get the picture but all this can be caused by a bad credit rating.  To avoid this you need to make sure your credit rating is up and stays up.  The way to do this is go right to the source.

In the US, all things that involve your credit are collected and analyzed by 3 companies, Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.  They set you credit score and is where creditors, potential employers, and government agencies go to learn about you.  Because of that it is important that every thing is correct.  Luckily for the consumer, this is easy enough to check.  By law, each of the companies are required to prove you with a copy of their report for free once a year.  You need to get a copy of all three.

Once you have them the work will begin.  The first thing you will want to look for are obvious signs of identity theft.  In the age of computers it has become easier and more common.  There will be cards issued you did not apply for or reissues of cards you do have.  Depending on how long the thief has had them you might already see late payments on the cards (they do not steal them to pay them off!).  At this point you will have to swoop into action but the process of what you will have to do is beyond the scope here; you just need to know to get this fixed as soon as possible.

The next thing is to check for accuracy of what legitimately was yours, correct where they were in err, or pay when it was your fault.  From here on out check your report so things do not get out of hand again and you will be well on your way to improving your credit rating.