If you’re in the US, you can get a free copy of your credit report from each of the major credit bureaus once a year — and you should. You can get them all at once, or you can rotate through the bureaus and space them out throughout the year (such as by getting one report every 4 months.)

It’s ridiculously easy to do too.

Just go to www.annualcreditreport.com, choose your state, and click Request Report. You’ll fill in some information, choose the credit reporting company or companies you want to get your report from, answer a few questions, and then be taken to your report(s).

Well, unless you’re like me and have to request one of them by mail or phone for some odd reason. But even that is pretty darn easy.

It’s important to check your report annually to make sure that the information is accurate, and to verify that no one appears to have stolen your identity. If you do find something that’s not right, just follow the dispute procedures listed on the credit bureau’s site.

Since your credit report is used to determine your credit score, you’ll probably be asked if you want to buy that. Unless you have a specific reason for obtaining your credit score, you can skip that and save yourself a few bucks since truly free credit scores are hard to find. Remember that getting the report itself is free, and won’t count against you in any way.

For more information about getting free access to your credit report (and what to do if you find an error), check out the FTC’s Facts for Consumers site.

Have you gotten your credit report yet this year? If so, did you find any errors on it?