Checking your score every few days?

[Anonymous]

I've been hanging out in the various boards the past few days and reading a ton of good info about restoring my credit. I've read several post from people who are saying that they check thier scores every few days.

How are they doing this? I paid $40 to get my EQ and TU scores yesterday. Are they paying $20 a pop to see the score or subscribers to some service that does that? At $20 per score that could add up quick!!

[RobertEG]

Many want to track their scores often, particularly when new to the game.

That is fine.  However, once you have dealt with major items, it becomes increasingly less important to receive updated scores.

Your CR is the source of all scores, so reviewing your CR periodically is more important.

I order my free annual credit reports from annualcreditreport.com, and stager them 4 months between each CRA.  Free and adequate for my needs.

[Chrisla2077]

Alot of peope use Score Watch to check their Equifax score every few days. It's like 15 bucks a month

[GoodCredBen]

I use SW, but before i knew about SW, i was paying like 40 dollars here every few days..... lol i was obsessed!

[pizzadude]

After you know where you stand with your score, I wouldn't obsess about it, or check it regularly ~ unless you are planning a major installment loan purchase in which case you need a specific score to qualify for acceptable financing.

[Chrisla2077]

I have SW, but I only check my Transunion score once a month, I would like to see what my Experian FICO is as a baseline, but i'm not eligible for PSECU...oh well.

[llecs]

OP, back in my repair days I was pulling each FICO report 3-4 times per month for both DW and I, and back then we had access to our EX FICO too. The $$$$$$$$ added up in a hurry. In fact when EX FICOs went away, I figured I'd save 33% from here on out and I was happy. What I found works best is to subscribe to a CMS that pulls all 3 reports. As you see changes to those reports, then you can selectively target EQ and/or TU reports to see those FICO changes. You'll save a lot of money and after a while you'll generally know and be able to predict score changes if x happens or y happens. Once we bought our home, we scaled it back to once per month and now are starting to pull every other month. I think FICO's stock might take a hit.

Ditto to SW. Most use SW to monitor their scores. DW and I kept it for the 30% discount on future EQ pulls. If a change happened, I wanted to know the score impact immediately. I didn't want to wait the week or so for the score alert to come. We used SW for the discount and pulled right away. Same applies to the 20% off for TUQM subscribers.