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You have made a very wise financial decision the decision to Credit Monitoring reports. Now you are left with the dilemma of which service to choose? There are hundreds of credit monitoring services out there, here are some tips to help you find the best one for your needs.

Price

Credit monitoring can vary in price dramatically and many times for no obvious reasons. You can expect to pay anywhere between for $4.95-$29.95 per month. You will also see many advertised for "Free" be very careful and read the fine print. The "Free" is usually the first month is free, then they bill you every month, and these ones are usually the most expensive ones. Most of the reputable companies will give you a short no obligation trial period; this is usually around a week. I would recommend for most consumers a product that is in the $12-$15 dollar range. This will give you the protection and features you need for the best price.

Features

As with price, the features which are included in your credit monitoring service will also vary widely. The most basic services will only include your single credit report (there are three credit reports for every consumer) and they will not include a credit score, let alone all three credit scores. You will want to make sure you are monitoring all three credit reports, as information on them can vary.

The next important feature is your credit scores, as mentioned above you will want a service that provides you with at least one credit score, but having all three shown will even be better. Since information varies in each report, your credit scores will also vary.

You will also want to take notice of how often they credit monitoring service will send out alerts to the changes on your credit reports. I would highly recommend a service that reports every 24 hours if there is a change on any of your credit reports. This is very important because if there is fraudulent activity on your credit reports you will want to make sure you react as quickly as possible.

There can be many other features, but I consider these to be the highest priority's when selecting a credit monitoring service. Other features can include various financial calculators, budget helpers, and other tools to help you with your personal finance.

Easy To Read

The last and perhaps the most important thing to look for is easy to read data. The data these companies receive from the credit bureaus is in a jumbled mess which can be very hard to read, and even harder to make sense out of. You will want your data to be presented in a easy to understand way, and with explanations as to what it all means.