Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the first day consumers in Iowa and other midwestern states can get a free copy of the credit report that a handful of big financial-reporting firms keep on us. Attorney General Tom Miller says there are three major credit-reporting companies in the U.S., and up to now they’ve charged you a fee to see the files they keep. The change is a result of a fairly simple change in federal amendment, he says, to make sure that consumers have free access to information that “everyone else has about their credit.” Miller says you should take advantage of the new opportunity, and take a look at the data that everyone else is reading about you. They’re people like creditors, employers and insurance companies, sometimes with your consent, Miller says. The Attorney General says credit information’s getting more important these days, and this new rule will mean that once a year you can get a report from each of the three credit-reporting companies at no charge. If you want another within a year, he says they can still charge for that. The companies used to charge a litle under ten dollars for each report. Miller suggests taking advantage of that, and using some planning. He says it’s your chance to see that there aren’t errors in your report…wrong names, addresses, or “just items on that shouldn’t be on.” And of course identity theft, a crime that’s growing fast, is another reason to carefully check over your credit report. The three national credit-reporting companies are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion but there’s one website set up to get all their reports from the same place — simply surf to www.freecreditreport.com