Credit Monitoring Service for joint (spousal) monitoring?

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone, I've been watching my scores for years and credit building. My spouse, not so much. In addition to MYFICO, I already pay for services and use free ones like CK and CS and all the ones that come with my creditors for free. Do I have to pay for seperate services or is there a way to attach my spouse and even children to my paid services where I can monitor everything with one account?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi everyone, I've been watching my scores for years and credit building. My spouse, not so much. In addition to MYFICO, I already pay for services and use free ones like CK and CS and all the ones that come with my creditors for free. Do I have to pay for seperate services or is there a way to attach my spouse and even children to my paid services where I can monitor everything with one account?

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@Anonymous

Welcome to MyFICO

Sorry that your question wasn't answered earlier.  You will need to pay for each individual separately if you want to monitor their credit.  For privacy reasons each person has to have their own account.

[Anonymous]

From my understanding you will need a separate account for everyone you want to track.

[vanillabean]

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@Anonymous wrote:

For privacy reasons each person has to have their own account.

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I’m not so sure that’s the case. A credit profile is a highly individual matter, and just as it’s demanding extracting milk from coffee once poured, it’s often not cost-efficient applying a credit profile mechanism for a couple parting ways.

That’s not to say that privacy isn’t treated as a major factor in having access to your credit; it is, notably by way of the FCRA, but privacy is not the reason that credit accounts are individual, privacy is merely keeping individual credit confidential.

It may be added that there is no express right to privacy in the United States Constitution; it’s not uncommon to think there is, but no. Some state constitutions, California is one, however have been amended to expressly provide for a right to privacy.

In everyday life the credit data of a couple is analyzed as a whole for various occasions such as finding the lower of two middle scores for a joint mortgage. Often the term individual is contrasted to corporations rather than your fellow human being.

All of this and no mention of AUs!

[Anonymous]

You can get FICO scores only from myfico. There are many other companies that offer free credit monitoring and identity theft protection, like credit sesame and credit karma, but they do not offer genuine fico scores (we call them fako scores). Many of them that are free. Companies that have paid plans typically offer more benefits. It is up to you to read carefully what they offer and does it worth for you. (type name of the credit monitoring company + review). In my opinion IdentityForce is one of the best for family plans (not trying to promote them of course). 

[Anonymous]

Hello Elite!  Welcome to the forums.  You write:

"You can get FICO scores only from myfico."

This is not actually true.  There are lots of ways people can and do get FICO scores, most of which have nothing to do with myFICO.

A common place people get free FICO score nowadays is via their credit cards.  Bank of America, Barclays, and Discover provide TU-based FICO scores.  Chase Slate and Amex provide EX FICOs.  Citi provides EQ FICOs.  And there are a number of issuers I am sure I am missing.

Some banks, like DCU, offer free FICOs for opening a savings or checking account with them.

There are free services like the Discover Scorecard and creditscore.com that offer FICOs.  (The Discover Scorecard is different from the FICO that comes with a Discover card.)

And then there are low cost services like Credit Check Total (and a number of others) that supply FICO scores.

Finally there are apps that provide free FICO scores.

None of these are connected with myFICO.

[Anonymous]

Hello and thanks!

You are right there are more free ways ...

An year ago we wrote on our site about 9 ways to get fico socres for free. Some of the ways that you've mentioned are not there, we should update it soon ...

[Anonymous]

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@vanillabean wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

For privacy reasons each person has to have their own account.

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I’m not so sure that’s the case. A credit profile is a highly individual matter, and just as it’s demanding extracting milk from coffee once poured, it’s often not cost-efficient applying a credit profile mechanism for a couple parting ways.

That’s not to say that privacy isn’t treated as a major factor in having access to your credit; it is, notably by way of the FCRA, but privacy is not the reason that credit accounts are individual, privacy is merely keeping individual credit confidential.

It may be added that there is no express right to privacy in the United States Constitution; it’s not uncommon to think there is, but no. Some state constitutions, California is one, however have been amended to expressly provide for a right to privacy.

In everyday life the credit data of a couple is analyzed as a whole for various occasions such as finding the lower of two middle scores for a joint mortgage. Often the term individual is contrasted to corporations rather than your fellow human being.

All of this and no mention of AUs!

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Honestly have no idea what that has to do with what I posted.  No where did I say it as a 'right' under any constitution.  There are plenty of privacy laws that have absolutely nothing to do with any constitutional right, such as HIPAA.  

As for joint mortgages, they still pull each person's credit individually.

There is no way that any credit monitoring service would allow any person to include the credit of another person, family or not.

Anyways, I think the OP got the info that they were looking for.

[rmduhon]

@CreditGuyInDixie Don't forget that several Synchrony cards offer TU Fico scores. Definitely Walmart and Amazon, not sure of the others.

[Anonymous]

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@rmduhon wrote:
@Anonymous Don't forget that several Synchrony cards offer TU Fico scores. Definitely Walmart and Amazon, not sure of the others.

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Yup.  And Wells Fargo.  And I am sure more still.