Tools & resources | Nothing on this page is monetized
The free things, in one place, with nothing in between.
Every link here is free and operated by a government agency or the organization authorized to provide it. We're not paid if you use any of them, and several reduce the number of reasons anyone would need to hire us.
The free resources grouped by job, or a side-by-side of free official source versus the paid lookalike.
1200 x 750No affiliate links on this page. Ever.
Not now, not when traffic grows, not if one of these organizations offers a partner program later. This page exists to be useful, and a tracking parameter would turn it into something else.
Where NCC does have a commercial relationship with a product, it's disclosed at the point of mention on the relevant page. It won't be here.
Start here
Six things people routinely pay for that cost nothing
Each of these has a paid lookalike that ranks well in search and takes money for a free government or authorized service. None of it is illegal. All of it is avoidable.
| What it is | Real cost | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Your credit reports | Free, weekly | All three bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com, the site authorized by federal law. Weekly access is permanent. |
| A credit freeze | Free | Directly with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Free to place and free to lift, and it lasts until you lift it. |
| A fraud alert | Free | Contact one bureau and it must notify the other two. |
| An EIN | Free | IRS.gov, issued immediately online. The IRS states plainly that you never have to pay a fee for one. |
| A D-U-N-S Number | Free | Dun & Bradstreet. Standard processing takes up to 30 business days. Paying buys speed, not the number. |
| Small business counseling | Free | SBA-funded SBDCs and SCORE. Real advisors, no charge, and badly underused. |
Government services live on .gov domains. If you're about to pay for an EIN, a credit freeze, or a credit report, check the address bar first. The paid versions buy search ads and design their pages to look official, which is why people land on them in good faith.
Credit reports & disputes
Reading your file, and fixing what's wrong with it
The CFPB complaint portal is the one people don't know about. It forwards your complaint to the company and requires a response. How disputes actually work ->
Identity & privacy
Prevention, and recovery when prevention came too late
If accounts have been opened in your name, IdentityTheft.gov is the first step rather than a later one. The report it generates unlocks rights you'll need afterwards. The full recovery sequence ->
Business formation & credit
Starting one, and giving it a financial identity
On BOI specifically: US-formed companies no longer file. What changed and who still reports ->
Funding
Before you apply for anything
SBA does not lend directly under 7(a); a participating lender does, and that lender makes the decision. What underwriters actually look at ->
Money management
Budgeting, debt, and the basics
If your essential costs exceed your income, nonprofit credit counseling is the right call and many of those agencies are free or low cost. That's a better use of your money than hiring us. Cash flow and the order of operations ->
The gap this page can't fill
State resources, which you have to look up yourself
Business filing requirements, licensing, probate, and insurance regulation are state matters and differ substantially. We're not going to summarize fifty states and tell you it's current.
- Your Secretary of State, or equivalent filing office, for formation, annual reports, fees, and good standing. Search for your state's name plus "Secretary of State business filings" and check it ends in .gov.
- Your state Department of Insurance for licensing verification and consumer complaints.
- Your state attorney general's consumer protection division for scam reporting and state-specific consumer rights.
- Your city and county for business licenses, which are separate from state formation and the thing people most often miss.
Always go to the state's own site rather than a third-party summary. That includes ours.
So where do we come in
These cover most of it. Here's the part they don't.
Fair question, given this page spends its whole length pointing you somewhere other than us. The honest answer is that free resources are excellent at telling you what to do and nearly useless at telling you which thing first, or what your particular mess actually is.
What the free tools do well
- Tell you the rules, accurately and for nothing.
- Give you the forms and the official processes.
- Handle any single, well-defined task you can identify yourself.
- Answer general questions better than most paid content does.
What they can't do
- Look at your actual reports, filings, and numbers and tell you what's wrong.
- Sequence twelve things into the three that matter now.
- Tell you the problem you walked in with isn't the one to fix first.
- Do the work when you'd rather not, or track it over the months some of this takes.
- Answer "is this offer any good" with your term sheet in front of them.
Plenty of people will read this page, do four free things, and never need us. That's the point of publishing it, and we'd rather that than have you pay for an EIN.
The ones who hire us generally aren't buying information. They're buying someone to look at their specific situation, work out the order, and handle the parts they don't want to. The nine situations we work on ->
Used these and hit something they don't cover?
That's usually a sign you have a real question rather than a general one, which is exactly the sort of thing worth a conversation. If the answer turns out to be one more free resource, that's what you'll get.