Order your free credit report

Your credit score comes up more often than you might think — when you buy a house, take out a loan, lease a car, rent an apartment, and even when you get homeowners insurance or put braces on a child’s teeth — so it makes sense to keep track of your credit report.

Credit scores range from 330 to 850. The average is 600 to 800, with scores over 720 being most desirable. If your score is under 680, you are likely to be penalized with higher interest rates for loans or denied credit altogether.

Credit scores are taken from your credit history and are weighted as follows:

“35 percent — Whether you pay on time

“30 percent — Amount you owe and what is available

“15 percent — Length of credit history

“10 percent — Types of credit

“10 percent — New credit applications

Federal law provides one free credit report per year to each consumer. That’s one from each of the three main reporting agencies: Experion, TransUnion and Equifax. Plus there are a few states with laws that give consumers additional free reports: Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Vermont.

The good news is that you no longer have to wait on the phone with all three credit reporting agencies when you want to order your credit reports. Annual Credit Report has been designated as the clearinghouse for all three agencies, with ordering either online (not advised), by mail or on the phone.

The question that often comes up is whether you should order all three at the same time, or space them out and order one every four months from a different reporting agency. And there’s no good answer to that. If you order all three at the same time, you can compare them, but you then have to wait one year before ordering again.

However, if you’ve been the victim of identity theft and don’t know it yet, ordering even one report is likely to indicate that something is amiss with your credit. Ordering one credit report every four months is a good way to keep track of the overall health of your credit.