Keeping an eye on your credit score is crucial for making sure you can get the credit you need. It can also be an early warning system in cases of identity theft. But the three main credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — are only required to give you a free credit report once a year. Anything beyond that, you have to pay for.

There is a new website that offers to provide you with your credit score for free at any time, though. CreditKarma helps users track their credit score. If you sign up with their website, you will not need to pay a single cent to access your score. However, you will be asked to look at some advertising for companies that target your credit score. It is, I think, a reasonable trade off, especially since CreditKarma must pay the credit reporting agencies for your credit report.

The signup process is fairly simple. CreditKarma does ask you for a lot of personal information, including your Social Security number. However, after a careful look at their privacy policy (and their certifiers), I’d say that giving CreditKarma your Social Security number doesn’t put you in any more danger of identity theft than receiving a credit card application in the mail.

Once you’ve finished  putting in your contact details, CreditKarma immediately delivers your credit score. They also provide you some interesting information, like how you measure up to both the national average and other CreditKarma members. There’s also some specifics on just how a credit score works. In addition to your credit score, you’ll immediately see a number of offers, from credit cards with special deals for your range of credit score to free trials. Personally, I’m pretty happy with my current cards. I skipped over them. If you’re looking for something in particular — like a 0 percent introductory rate on a credit card — you might be able to find a good deal through Credit Karma.

I was especially interested in the Current Rates listing that Credit Karma also offers. Essentially the website lists out the rates you’d be offered on mortgages, HELOCs, etc. if you headed down to the bank right now. Of course, this number is just an estimate. It’s still worth keeping an eye on, though: watching estimated interest rates drop can be a great motivator to help you raise your overall credit score, especially if you’re working towards a new house or other goal.

Overall, CreditKarma is a good website to have in your personal finance toolbox. There is no limit on how often you can check your credit score — although it doesn’t change on a daily basis. I don’t intend to log in to CreditKarma every morning, but I am planning to make it part of my monthly financial routine, along with paying bills and thinking about my goals for the next month.

When you’re looking at your credit report, depending on which of the three companies provided it to you, you may see your FICO score — a number between 300 and 850. But it can be difficult to understand just how that number corresponds to your credit score.

Your FICO score, or credit score, is based on the information in your credit report. It’s a sort of analysis of your payment history, ability to pay off credit and comparison to how other people have done in similar situations, all rolled into one little number. And that one little number can mean a big difference if you’re looking for a mortgage or other credit.

The problem that you may run into with a low FICO score is that FICO scores are all about making lenders’ lives easier. No matter whether you had some sort of extenuating circumstance that led to a low FICO score, you won’t even have the option of explaining it away to a lender. Instead, it’s up to you to raise your FICO score.

Unlike credit reports, which can show past mistakes, FICO scores can be relatively easy to repair. While you can’t raise your score overnight, you can bring it up. And when a lender looks at a FICO score, rather than your credit history, they don’t see how long your FICO has been at a certain level. In a way, FICO scores can even the playing field.

To improve your FICO score, you will need to take some steps to generally improve your credit:

• Make paying your bills in full and on time your priority. Late payments and outstanding bills significantly drag down FICO scores.
• Pay off credit cards — but don’t close your cards after you’ve paid them off. A high ratio of credit available to credit used can raise your FICO score.
• Give it time. You’ll need positive credit history to bring up your score, which is one of the reasons it’s hard for young people to get high FICOs.
• Don’t apply for any new credit. Sure, you’ll need to apply for that mortgage you’re aiming for, but limit your other credit: no new cards or accounts. The folks figuring FICO scores assume that if you’re looking for a lot of credit at one time, you’re in some sort of financial difficulty.

Lastly, building up a respectable FICO score can take some time. If you’re planning some big purchases in the future — like a home, start now! It may take a year to get your credit to the level you’ll need to get a decent mortgage. And once you’ve got your FICO up, make the commitment to keep it up. Keep up on your bills and financial commitments to keep away worries about FICO scores and credit reports.

No matter what your financial situation is — whether you’re getting ready to purchase a home or you’re working on getting out of debt — you should have a good idea of what’s on your credit report. Because your credit report is the key factor for lenders trying to decide just how much credit they’ll extend to you for mortgages, credit cards or car loans,not knowing your credit report can set you up for a nasty surprise.

As long as you live in the U.S., you are entitled to a free copy of your credit report every year from each of the three main reporting agencies (TransUnion, Equifax and Experian). And to make the process easy, all three reports are available through the same website: AnnualCreditReport.com. You can also obtain your credit report through a toll-free number or a mailing address available on the site. AnnualCreditReport.com is the only site that is actually required to give you a free copy of your credit report: there are hundreds of other websites available online that offer to do the same thing, but most of them are effectively scams — they require you to sign up for other services to get a free credit report or use other techniques to get money from you.

To receive a credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com, you’ll need to provide some personal information (including your Social Security number) and answer a series of questions about your past credit, such as what car you owned at a given time, in order to prove that you are, in fact, you. This system is intended to protect your credit information. If you can’t answer all credit questions correctly — and don’t worry if you can’t; I couldn’t and there wasn’t anything wrong with my credit — you’ll be asked to provide some further information via mail.

I don’t recommend getting all three credit reports at once — instead, you can, in a way, game the system. I get a credit report every four months: TransUnion in January, Experian in May and Equifax in September. This way, I have a good idea of what’s happening with my credit year round. Not all of my credit activity shows up on all three reports because some lenders report to only one or two, but I still have a general picture.

When you receive your credit report, you should check it over and make sure that you recognize each item on the report. If you find an item that you need to dispute, you will need to contact the credit reporting agency to both file a dispute and to request a fraud alert to be placed on your file, if you feel that you may have been a victim of identity theft.