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.comI 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!