How to Monitor Your Parents' Credit Score

Are your parents getting older and having trouble managing their finances? If so, you may be able to help. Whether your parents have granted you authority over their finances or not, you can assist them in monitoring their credit.

Keeping an eye on your parents’ credit scores isn’t just about making sure they maintain good credit. Identity thieves often target older adults because they know they’re less likely to check their credit reports and account balances. By the time the thieves are caught, they’ve often racked up thousands of dollars of debt in the victim’s name.

By helping your parents track their credit scores (or by monitoring them yourself), you can do your part to protect them from identity theft and financial losses. This article will take a closer look at how to monitor parents’ credit scores.

How to monitor parents’ credit scores

If one or both of your parents have created a power-of-attorney document permitting you to act on their behalf, you’ll be able to access their credit reports yourself. However, you can still guide them through the credit-monitoring process even if they don’t have a power of attorney in place.

Here are a few strategies you can use to keep an eye on your parents’ credit scores.

Get copies of credit reports regularly

All consumers are entitled to a free copy of their credit report every 12 months. If your goal is to safeguard against identity theft, though, you should review your parents’ credit reports at least every few months. You can purchase credit reports more frequently, but it may be cheaper and easier to use a credit-monitoring service.

You and your parents can access their reports at AnnualCreditReport.com.

Sign up for a credit-monitoring service

Before you and your parents rush to pay for a credit-monitoring subscription, check to see if you already have access to credit-monitoring services. Many banks and credit card issuers regularly update their account holders’ credit scores. So do some credit-builder apps. Kikoff is one of them.

To effectively build your credit, you need to be able to track it. We monitor our customers’ credit scores with each of the major credit bureaus.

If your credit-monitoring service sends an alert notifying you that one of your parents’ credit scores has dropped, you’ll know to get a copy of their report to look for errors or signs of fraud.

Freeze your parents’ credit

Freezing your parents’ credit isn’t the same as monitoring it. When a consumer freezes their credit, it prevents anyone from opening new credit accounts in their name. This can be a helpful measure if you have reason to believe that one of your parents may have had their identity stolen.

What to do if you find errors in your parents’ credit report

Hopefully, you won’t see anything unexpected when you comb through your parents’ credit reports. However, if you do happen to find something unusual (and especially if you see new accounts that your parents didn’t open themselves), you should act quickly.

Consumers have the right to dispute errors and abnormalities on their credit reports with all three major credit bureaus. If you think the issue is the result of identity theft, you should report it at IdentityTheft.gov right away. You’ll need a copy of the report when you dispute information with the credit bureaus.

All three bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) make it possible to file disputes online or by mail. Before you sit down with your parents to file the report, you should gather the following:

• Your contact information
• Your parents’ contact information
• A copy of your identity theft report (if applicable)
• The specific error and any associated account numbers
• Any other documents that support your argument

If you haven’t already, this is also a good time to freeze your parents’ credit. If identity thieves already have their information, ordering a freeze will stop them from opening new accounts in your parents’ names.

Conclusion

Helping your parents watch their credit is one of the more practical ways to protect them from fraud.

Pull their reports at AnnualCreditReport.com every few months rather than waiting for the annual mark, and consider whether a bank, card issuer, or app you already use includes monitoring. If something looks wrong, file at IdentityTheft.gov, dispute it with all three bureaus, and freeze their credit.

A power of attorney makes this easier, but you can still walk them through the process without one.

Kikoff gives eligible users access to a Kikoff Credit Account with no hard credit check to sign up, and reports monthly payments to all three credit bureaus.

Build credit with Kikoff and keep an eye on your own credit while you're at it.