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Anyone thinks it's a good idea to have both services? I am new to credit (only 10 months with cap 1 secured, Amex ZYNC, and Discover Student), and I am not sure what to do. For those new to credit, you think these services are essential?
I personally consider them to be wasted money, but it's a question of your own value judgment.
@GoldenloveNY wrote:Anyone thinks it's a good idea to have both services? I am new to credit (only 10 months with cap 1 secured, Amex ZYNC, and Discover Student), and I am not sure what to do. For those new to credit, you think these services are essential?
Essential? No. But I'm a bit obsessive about watching my scores change, so I do use ScoreWatch. There are plenty of things that I spend money on for things that I enjoy but aren't essential, and this is one of them.
What IS essential is being responsible with your cards. Use them, keep your balances within reasonable limits, and never, EVER be late with a payment. If you do these things, you scores will stay in good shape.
@GoldenloveNY wrote:Anyone thinks it's a good idea to have both services? I am new to credit (only 10 months with cap 1 secured, Amex ZYNC, and Discover Student), and I am not sure what to do. For those new to credit, you think these services are essential?
It just depends. If you plan on purchasing the TU fico here every three months than the quarterly monitoring is basically a discounted 'layaway' for the report..haha. If not probably not worth it since it does not give alerts. Personally now that I have the Walmart Discover free monthly fico, I will wait until it updates here in November to see the point difference than cancel the Quarterly monitor and just rely on the Walmart fico.I will save 5 bucks a month.
Now the scorewatch, once you get past the fact that changes are not an instant alert it seems VERY useful in keeping up with your score. I seem to get updates to my score about 4-7 days after the change actually occurs. I will keep this.
I just canceled my last two daily pull memberships. I was getting totally obsessed with my credit reports to the point if I received an alert text, I would rush to the nearest computer. It got exhausting. I have nothing negative on my reports but inquiries. At one point, I was spending close to $100 a month to monitor everything. Ridiculous, I know. I am obessive by nature.
I use both. Im doing a major rebuild. My scores initially were around 540's. Im now between 680 and 700 depending on the score (not bad for 4 months of work ). I use both of them for a couple of reasons:
1. I like the alerts I get from SW (they can be a little slow at times but it gives me a good way of tracking things)
2. The SW alerts give me hard numbers of where my score is and with the tweeking Im doing to utilization and new accounts I can see how things impact my score.
3. Both SW and TU quarterly give me the ability to track my changes over time.
4. Since Im working toward refi (and earlier in my rebuild when I was getting items removed), the discount on score reports makes the products worth it. Once Im done with refi, I'll reevaluate which services I use.
SW is sounding more intruiging. I was under the impression they only offered two pulls a year. How are you getting frequent score updates?
@melbaro wrote:SW is sounding more intruiging. I was under the impression they only offered two pulls a year. How are you getting frequent score updates?
They do give you the two full reports each year, but they also send alerts for changes to your fico score. So for example, if you add a new account it will alert you of the new account and the new score.
I have both SW and Quarterly Monitoring. SW keeps watch on Equifax and Quarterly Monitoring reviews your TU. The score they give are FICO so the info is useful. But for alerts and all 3 reports I use, and highly recommend, USAA Credit monitoring Premium. The alerts have been instant for me and you can upgrade to daily pulls of all 3 reports for around $22 per mth. Call in for a discounted rate.