Y’all – after years of purposely ignoring this for reasons not even worth mentioning (they’re all lame) I finally froze my credit AND IT WAS SO EASY!!

It literally took me under 5 minutes to do it and I actually caught myself muttering out loud: “Gosh I’m an idiot… shoulda just done it sooner.” But, with all things boring and unimportant until they become important (!), freezing credit was just never a priority because nothing bad ever happened so far without doing it.

And then all those major data breaches happened, and well, as Jonathan from My Money Blog recently put it:

“The balance between the guaranteed hassle of maintaining a credit freeze and the potential hassle of dealing with an identity theft attempt has finally shifted enough towards just having them frozen as a default position.”

I star’d this a month ago for Future Jay to deal with, and then I started getting dinged left and right with alerts last week telling me my data is now public to the world (which I already assumed it was, because man – we do EVERYTHING online!) and something about seeing it *in writing* finally prompted me to take action.

And just like that my virginity was unfrozen (see what I did there?!)

And it really was that easy to do!! Under 5 mins at each bureau – no joke. If you’ve been putting it off and know you need to do it, just stop reading this right now and get it done.

Here are the 3 places you need to go to:

1. Experian.com/freeze/center.html
2. Transunion.com/credit-freeze
3. Equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze

Create an account, fill in some personal data, and then click that magical “freeze my credit” button and BOOM – you’ll feel amazing.

(And yes – it is stupid you have to go to three (!) different bureaus and create three (!) different accounts, but you can’t do anything about it so don’t even waste your energy. Methodically move through each one of them and then check it off your list once and for all! Believe me when I tell you it’s oddly satisfying clicking that freeze button!! 😂)

You’ll feel good for not having to think about it anymore, but even more importantly – you won’t have to worry about dummies trying to open credit lines or loans under your name anymore too! Or whatever else those lame hackers like to do with their wasted skills, ugh…

Why don’t they put it to GOOD use???

And FYI: you can unfreeze them just as easily at any point too. Also free! Just log back in and click “unfreeze” –  and voila! So even if you think you may need access to your credit in the near future, freezing it now won’t hold you up later in the process. Just remember to come back later and log back in!

I could have sworn all this used to cost like $10 or $15 a shot back in the day, adding yet another reason to not be bothered by it, but at some point along the way I guess they nixed that and now you can do it without even lifting your wallet. Or this post wouldn’t have ever been written, as sad as that is, lol…

Once you’re done freezing all the credits, you can then nerd out even *more* by grabbing your credit SCORE and credit REPORT too! Also free at most bureaus!

I actually spent way more time on the sites doing this than placing my credit freezes, lol…

Here’s what I found:

(My Vantage 3.0 score)

(My FICO^® Score)

TransUnion offers the Vantage 3.0 score too, however they charge $0.99 for it so I just grabbed it from Equifax for free ;) (Although weirdly, when I first created my Equifax account it said you had to pay for your score, but when I logged off and then back on later to check something different, it turned free?! So if you see the same just log out and then back in and hopefully it resets the same for you too.

Also – when we created my wife’s TransUnion account it wouldn’t let us click the “freeze” button for some reason, so I had to call and wait on hold for a bit but then they toggled something and it worked just fine. So don’t let random snags hold you up in the process! Just keep going!)

You can also easily grab your credit REPORTS from all three bureaus each year too – for free. Which is smart to make sure no one has *previously* done anything with your identity before you could lock everything up.

Now this task takes wayyyyyy longer though, so don’t even get bogged down by it unless you’ve already frozen your accounts and have some free hours on your hand :)

There’s also the option to add “fraud alerts” to your accounts as well so you’ll get notified whenever someone tries to access your credit. And fortunately with this one you just have to do it at *one* bureau and they pass along the note to the other two making it even faster! We also did this as a double precaution.

The alerts only last a year though, so you’ll have to renew it later once the time comes again (there’s also different kinds of alerts too that are more in depth it seems, like if you already had your credit stolen and filed a police report, or if you’re on active duty, but I just stuck with the 1 year normal alert since nothing bad has happened yet – at least that I currently know about! I still gotta pore over those 3 credit reports!!)

Now on the down side you can’t add any freezes or fraud alerts to KIDS’ credits as easily as you can yourself (anyone under 18). But you CAN do it, you just have to go through a more lengthy process of showing social security cards and birth certificates to prove who they are, and who YOU are, and then wait a while for it all to be verified. I have yet to go through this process (and not looking forward to doing it 3x over!) but it is on the list as there should be NO credit being opened for years on behalf of any of these guys…

I should also note that once you create all these credit accounts, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax will equally bombard you with promotions and emails trying to upsell you on a bunch of products (and credit cards!! Which seem counterproductive!). But again – nothing you can do about it except to unsubscribe and avert your eyes, so don’t let it prevent you from getting the job done  😎

Here are some fun examples of what’s to come though:

******

And on and on and on…

Again, just hit “unsubscribe” and you won’t have to deal with it again.

TL;DR:

Freezing your credit is free, easy to do, and can save you a butt ton of time and frustration in the future. Spend the 15 minutes (total) getting it frozen at each of the bureaus and then call it a day. You can always unfreeze it later with a click of a button (also free).

Here are the 3 links again – do it before you get sidetracked!

1. Experian.com/freeze/center.html
2. Transunion.com/credit-freeze
3. Equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze

Your friend and fellow nerd,

UPDATE: I just learned you can also *temporarily* unfreeze your credit too (aka “thaw” it lol) for whenever you need access. You apparently set the # of days where it will re-freeze again later, that way you don’t have to remember to log back in again – genius! (Thx Bill and Nikki)

UPDATE II: Here’s another great idea from a fellow reader who just emailed me: “Hi J. Money- I have been freezing and checking credit reports on an annual basis for 20 years, and one thing I’ve learned that works for me and might for others too is spreading out when you check your free credit reports. If it’s your 1st time you check all three bureaus and get them squared up, but then after that just check one credit bureau at a time throughout the year. Check one in April, another in August, and then the last in December – or whatever schedule works for you. This has been super helpful for me.”