Author Topic: Tracking your credit score for free  (Read 8149 times)

smedleyb

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Tracking your credit score for free
« on: July 11, 2012, 12:24:23 PM »
My recent hobby of opening credit cards for travel reward bonuses has forced me to get serious about my credit.  Now, as a good Mustachian, I find it unacceptable to have to pay Equifax a small monthly fee to have access to their proprietary FICO score calculator.  While FICO is the big cheese in the credit score game, I've resorted to a couple of different sites/tactics to approximate my score at no cost:

(1)  https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp.  This website is "jointly operated by the three major U.S. credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. The site was created in order to comply with their obligations under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) to provide a mechanism for American consumers to receive up to three free credit reports per year". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnnualCreditReport.com

I pull one report every 4 months:  early January, early May, and early September.   Thus I have continuous access to my credit history to spot any irregularities, problems, oversights, etc.  These are the actual reports but they do not give you access to your credit score.

(2) http://www.creditsesame.com/.  Credit sesame is a simple, non-invasive personal finance website that is designed to rank your credit score based on your Experian National Equivalency Score, which assigns a value to your credit (360-840) very similar to the FICO scale (350-850).  While not exactly a true FICO, this number is nonetheless adequate at approximating what your FICO score might be.

(3) https://www.creditkarma.com/.  Much like creditsesame, creditkarma is a non-invasive PF site designed to give you an analysis of your credit score, but rather than FICO which uses Equifax and creditsesame which uses Experian, creditkarma "provides the TransRisk credit score generated from national credit bureau TransUnion,[1] the VantageScore, and the TransUnion Auto Insurance Risk Score."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_Karma  It also has a useful feature called the "credit score report card" which assigns a grade value to the different components that make up your credit score, like on-time payments, payment history, accounts, etc.  This is my go to site and I check it once a month at least.

Good luck! 



skyrefuge

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Re: Tracking your credit score for free
« Reply #1 on: July 11, 2012, 03:12:29 PM »
A couple weeks ago, I got an offer in the mail from my bank for a pre-approved home equity loan.  In the fine print on the back it said that they had checked my credit score before making the offer, and later on, that they only made the offer to people with credit scores of 750+.

I had no interest in the loan, but thanks, bank, for giving me a free credit score report!

DigitalRain

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Re: Tracking your credit score for free
« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2012, 09:46:32 AM »
I applied for a Target card and was denied (I was in school at the time so I had to put $0 for my income), but they informed me that my credit score was 770 in the rejection letter.

Will

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Re: Tracking your credit score for free
« Reply #3 on: July 14, 2012, 10:52:28 PM »
Quizzle tells you your credit score for free every 6 months (or at least it has for me).

grantmeaname

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Re: Tracking your credit score for free
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2012, 02:34:12 PM »
I opened a credit card a year and a week ago. I went in today to try and get the terms adjusted (no dice, turns out you need to have either income or assets, who would have thought?), but my CSR was happy to tell me my credit score. In one year of occasional use of a single card I've somehow gotten myself a 725. Holy shit! This must be one of those things where it's much easier to start responsibly than to undo damage you did years ago.

kisserofsinners

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Re: Tracking your credit score for free
« Reply #5 on: November 26, 2012, 03:04:08 PM »
I've recenty(ish) had credit score drama and it's not really straight forward for the "score". In most cases the free option doesn't give you the score and the score they give you can be highly variable. they all have the same info on your credit report, but they all interpret it differently.

For my own mental health i just focus on make sure theirs just no fraud and don't look at or pay for the scores. they change all the time and it just doesn't seem to be important when compared to your history. I'm totally a reformed score junky and i can't encourage kicking the habit enough.

Oddly enough my credit union gives me a quarterly "FICO grade" (they had to stop giving me the actual score a couple years ago) and after everything got resolved my score is an "A+", or at least 810. I'm just gonna be happy with that and stop exhausting myself.