There’s a big difference between credit ratings — you may think you have bad credit, but it might be good enough to still qualify for a reasonable car loan. The only way to find out is to check your credit score from the three major credit reporting agencies.
You’ve probably seen television and radio advertisements for a number of places that offer free credit scores — what these advertisements don’t clearly disclose is that you have to sign up for a credit monitoring service in order to get the free score. The program you sign up for is almost always a 7 day free trial of the service, and if you don’t cancel within that time, you’ll be billed a recurring monthly fee for credit monitoring.
If all you want is the free credit score, you can easily sign up for one of these services, provide your billing information, and then cancel the service as soon as you have your score. The key is to know that you have to do this beforehand, so that you’ll take care of the cancellation right away. Many people who don’t realize they are subscribing to a recurring payment service only realize they need to cancel after they’ve already been billed for one or two months of service.
You absolutely have to know your credit score before you can try to get approved for a car loan, so it makes sense to use one of these free credit score programs. If you see a huge difference in your scores from one agency to the next, you can get your actual credit report, which shows all of the accounts each reporting bureau has in your report.
This report (which is totally free) can be picked up at http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com. You can request a copy of this report once every 12 months. Note that this report won’t actually show your scores, which is why you first have to sign up for one of the free credit score services. It lists all the information that goes into calculating your score, so you can spot any potential inaccuracies in the report.