TransUnion, one of the three national credit bureaus, is about to officially settle a class-action lawsuit that will make some fairly valuable services available to almost all of us.

Once the settlement is approved in September, TransUnion will give qualifying consumers six or nine months of:

• Credit monitoring service. This means you'll be notified when new accounts appear on your credit report. If you take out a loan, you'll be notified. More importantly, if an ID thief takes out a loan in your name, you'll be notified.
• Daily access to your credit report. It's not too exciting to check your credit report every day, but it's critical that you check it at least yearly. All Americans have the right to check theirs three times a year for free, which we recommend they do to detect identity theft.
• Daily access to your credit score. This is something you normally have to pay for, and the daily access is actually pretty valuable. Your credit score can change daily, depending on how much debt you have, how recently you canceled a credit card, etc. So if you have a big purchase coming up that you plan to finance, it will be helpful to check your credit score regularly to see how well you'll do with qualifying, getting a good interest rate, etc.

Remember that there are two other credit bureaus, so you won't know what their credit reports say about you, but you can't have everything - not for free anyway.

Also, the TransUnion credit score will probably not be the FICO score - which is the most widely used score by lenders. It will likely be different from FICO, but not by too much - so you'll at least know how well you're doing in general. If your TU score is excellent or horrible, your FICO score probably will be too.

So who qualifies? Basically anybody who has used credit since 1987! That means loans, mortgages, credit cards, 6 months same-as-cash purchases, home-equity lines of credit, etc. I don't know anyone who doesn't fit that definition.

You can register right away, must do so by September 24. Settlement should be approved shortly after that, so that's when these benefits will be available.