There are a number of services that offer to have you track your credit report activity and get your credit scores, too. The problem with these services is that they charge upwards of $10-$20 per month. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s criminal to charge me to
access information about myself that someone else has created and that affects my financial life more than anything else in the world.
So paying $200+ a year to get access to info about myself is absurd.
Thankfully one of the credit bureaus is starting to ’see the light’ and is allowing certain online services to give you your credit score absolutely free with their other content.
Of those I’ve come across, my favorite is www.CreditKarma.com
This site allows you to check your credit score with TransUnion as many times as you want without any cost whatsoever. The way they make their money is by offering you various promotions for saving money based on your credit score. An example is a new 0% balance
transfer credit card for your 720 score. They then get a referral commission from the credit card company for you signing up through them.
The great thing is that they don’t share your info with anyone and they don’t send you any spam emails trying to upsell you on something else they make money off of.
**If your score isn’t above 720, you have a problem and should address it right away. Go to www.thecreditconcierge.com/coupon.pdf and fill out the coupon for a free Credit Analysis to find out exactly what is keeping you from having perfect credit.
My only caution for using CreditKarma.com is if you have a hard time staying away from promotional offers or so called ‘deals’ since most people shouldn’t be getting new credit accounts since two is more than enough.
Other than that, the service is a great value and it allows you to stay on top of one of your three scores without throwing hundreds of dollars away every year just trying to track what others are saying about you and your trustworthiness.
As for accessing your Experian and Equifax scores, hopefully they’ll ’see the light’ soon enough and start allowing providers like CreditKarma.com to give you access to your scores with them. Even though you can’t access them for free right now, being able to see
your TransUnion score is thorough enough for most people since information across bureaus doesn’t fluctuate drastically in most cases.
