Credit Monitoring through Mint...Worth it?

[trailrated]

So I just signed up for the free credit report monitoring (14 day trial) with Mint. Who will then charge $16.99 per month after. Since I already know my score now, I was considering canceling. Is there any situation where it would be worth the $203.88 a year to continue this service? Is there an actual free way to monitor this?

[gimp]

Yes, there are free ways. There are three credit report bureaus, each of which you can do for free once a year. There's also creditkarma.com which is very similar to mint - it doesn't give you an official score, but it gives you an approximate one, based on the same sources the official ones would (so it taps into your credit cards, loans, blah blah blah).

I use creditkarma.com once every couple weeks. Accounts are free.

[ROY2007]

I can't see many situations where this would be worth it. You can check your credit report once per year with each of the three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) at annualcreditreport.com. I check one of the three every quarter to make sure nothing unexpected has popped up. This report will not show your FICO credit score, but I'm not sure why you would need to check that on a monthly basis. I think one of the Discover credit cards includes your FICO score with your monthly statements, so that would be an option if you feel the need to monitor your credit score.

[LibrarIan]

It's not worth it. Check your score now and then ignore it until next year. As long you're paying off cards in full and not being late on loans, you're fine.