Accuracy

• As many as one in every eight credit reports may have errors that hurt your credit rating, according to Motley Fool website writer Dayana Yochim, and most commonly they center around payments erroneously marked as late, which takes a big toll on your credit score. Pulling your reports regularly gives you the opportunity to find and dispute such errors. The Fair Credit Reporting Act makes the credit bureaus investigate consumer complaints within 30 days and wipe out unverifiable information.
  
  

Inquiries

• You can track the companies that have been reviewing your credit reports when you pull your own copies. You generate some credit checks, called "hard inquiries," yourself by applying for new loans or credit cards, the MyFICO scoring site explains. These entries should match with your credit applications over the past two years. You will also see another type of credit check, called a "soft inquiry," performed by various firms for marketing purposes. You may visit the OptOutPrescreen.com website to stop soft inquiries if you are not comfortable with the number of them on your reports.
  
  

Identity Theft

• Your credit reports may contain signs of identity theft, such as delinquent accounts you never opened, unrecognized credit card applications and changed addresses and phone numbers, the Federal Trade Commission warns. Pulling them regularly alerts you to problems as quickly as possible. Contact one of the credit bureaus immediately if you suspect fraud, as it will notify the other two bureaus and all of them will place 90-day fraud alerts in your records to warn lenders.
  
  

Time Frame

• The best way to pull your free annual credit reports is one at a time, according to the Michigan Office of the Attorney General, because this spreads out your monitoring of the information. Order a single report at four month intervals, and repeat the process each year. For example, you might get your Experian report in January, your Equifax report in May and your TransUnion report in December each year. Keep track of your orders on your calendar so you do not accidentally try to order from the same bureau twice in one year.