Many thousands of home-based business startups have started with very little money. In fact, most are usually started with a few hundred dollars of personal savings.

Though this approach of financing a startup business is one of the better ways there may come a time when additional financing will be needed to grow the business. Traditionally when additional financing is being sought, banks are approached for a small business loan. One of the criteria used by the banks to evaluate your ability to pay them back is through your credit report. Knowing this, you should obtain a copy of your report so that you will know what is contained in your credit report before approaching a bank.

To obtain a copy of your report, you have two options, you can pay for a report from any one of hundreds of websites, or if you want a truly free credit report (without strings attached) you should log onto www.annualcreditreport.com, legislation passed by the federal government allows you to obtain three free credit reports on an annual basis.

Here are some areas of your report you should investigate: