General Credit Topics

[snowkitty]

How do you keep up with your scores and reports and how often do you look at them? I am only using creditkarma right now and once my wal-mart cc comes in, I can set my account up and be able to see my fico score there. Yesterday I received my "congratulations your card is on it's way" letter from Discover and it showed my Equifax score as a 688 so that is all I am going by right now. So I wonder how many of you are using the monthly subscriptions and to where. I want to see my credit reports with all the agencies but I thought I would wait until maybe January so that all of the cards I just opened will have hit. Is that smart or should I be looking more often?

[maiden_girl]

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snowkitty wrote:

How do you keep up with your scores and reports and how often do you look at them? I am only using creditkarma right now and once my wal-mart cc comes in, I can set my account up and be able to see my fico score there. Yesterday I received my "congratulations your card is on it's way" letter from Discover and it showed my Equifax score as a 688 so that is all I am going by right now. So I wonder how many of you are using the monthly subscriptions and to where. I want to see my credit reports with all the agencies but I thought I would wait until maybe January so that all of the cards I just opened will have hit. Is that smart or should I be looking more often?

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For a while, I had quarterly monitoring from MyFICO but I canceled it. Started using creditkarma even tho they are using FAKO scores...its still the closest match I've seen to FICO scores and it's free!! Waiting on my walmart card too so I can see my MOST recent FICO score.

[roxy382]

I use citi identity mointer. I pay $4.95 a month and I get all 3 CRs monthly and the alert you to New accounts, inquiries, and changes to personal info. The provide a FAKO score that I have found is always very close to my real FICO (last month showed 5 pts less than my FICO. It has has the credit analyzer that shows you what your score can be with different changes to your report.

[jamesdwi]

I use creditkarma daily, for watching cards report, the FAKO is useless,  walmart TU score and myfico score watch though i do debate canceling this one. Also check out ceditsesame.

When I am going App crazy the most effective way to get score the companies send me my accurate scores for free and allows me to pull my full credit report so I can see the full picture, and I get all 3 reports once a year. 

[lithium78]

I use the free TU04 FICO score from my Walmart card and I subscribe to Score Watch here on MyFico for my EQ.  Since it's almost impossible to get a EX FICO without taking a needless inquiry, I use Credit Sesame for their EX FAKO score.  I wouldn't bother with Credit Karma.  Their scores are really, really inaccurate.  They have a TU score more than 40 points lower than my FICO.

[jcstarkey8826]

I use CK to monitor TU activity and WM card to get score, EQ dispute (but never file one) to look at EQ info. and SW to monitor EQ score, I use CS to check experian activity and obviously no way to check my score.

[GomezMcSqueeze]

*accidental post*

[thom02099]

I use CreditKarma daily, to monitor TRENDS in my report.  I could care less about the actual score provided, since it is a FAKO.  CK provides info on my accounts, shows the various balances of my accounts, when they go down (or up), etc. 

I also subscribe to Experian's monitoring service, as it also provides me notices of inquiries and the actual report on file.  Since the bulk of my inquiries are EX, it's important to me to know when they occur and more importantly, fall off.  I have 4 that come off this month and another one in October.  I should see a 25 point gain from this.   Again a FAKO, but it's not so much about the score as it is the report.  I log in to EX usually weekly.

I also subscribe to ScoreWatch here, to get my EQ score and again to follow TRENDS.  If there is an alert to a change in my report I can go on line and check it out.  If needed, I can pull a report and new score from both EQ and TU. 

Some may say this is a bit of overkill.  Perhaps.  But since I started using monitoring services and following my reports very closely, my scores have gone from the low 600s to currently mid- to upper-700s and pushing (hopefully) 800.  It's all a matter of what you do with the information, and how you manage your finances to maximize your scores. 

[cd2004]

I use USAA credit monitoring for daily pulls when needed, myfico scorewatch for my real EQ since that is always my lowest score and if I see that Eq has an ok score then more than likely the others are ok. I also have Walmart FICO08 but I use credit karma for the actual details that is on the report not the FAKO scores.

[jsucool76]

I use CK and CS, but I think I'm gonna sign up for the wells fargo identity monitor, simply because the first month is only $1 and then I can cancel it right after that