The other day I was having lunch with co-workers. I don’t remember how this topic came across, but one of my co-workers was convinced that checking your credit would lower your credit score. I just wanted to emphasize that checking your credit is totally harmless. Why?
When you check your credit report through a credit monitoring service or directly through one of the Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRA’s for short), the company that provides the service will make a “soft” inquiry to the CRA’s to be able to pull your reports. These soft inquiries are recorded on your credit report, but they are only visible to you. No creditors will see these inquiries. And how do creditors take into account something they don’t see? They do not. This type of inquiries do not have any effect on your credit profile.
You have probably received credit card offers in your mail before. Do you know why these banks reached out to you? Because they know that you satisfy their screening criteria. And in order to figure that out, they had to make an inquiry to a CRA to view your credit profile. Each time they do that, that results in a soft inquiry. So if soft inquiries were harmful to your credit, your credit profile must’ve been ruined by now. Thankfully, soft inquires are completely benign.
So, go ahead and check your credit report if you’re curious. That won’t kill the cat. 😉
Best,
Richard (Hiep Tran)
Hiep's Finance 
A good credit record is extremely vital if you want your finances to be smooth.
Everyone should check their credit report once a year. They are free if you check them once a year at annualcreditreport.com (3 reports). 40 million people have mistake on their credit report, do check ur credit report.