Free Credit Report can be obtained by anybody and is always free the first time. Whether or not you are interested in getting a loan or not, everyone needs to check their credit reports once a year. This is to prevent any surprises that can pop up at the time when you do apply for a loan. You can easily get rejected as a borrower for a blemish on your report that you were not any aware was there. By checking once a year you can discover a problem yourself and make corrections before a lender finds the mistakes and penalizes you for it. And usually that is what will happen, a borrower is not rejected for the loan, but is penalized by a higher interest rate. You may not even be aware that this higher rating is due to your credit report and lenders are not going to go out of their way to tell you. Your credit report is your business, they are simply reading what is published. This higher rate cost money, so you can check your report now or pay money later.