The question: What service are people using to pull their credit reports and monitor their scores? These boards are full of statements like "pulled my reports today..." or "just checked my scores". myFICO offers that for $20 a pop, and $40 for both, which seems like it would be pretty steep to be doing on a regular basis. Is there some other credit monitoring service that people are using to pull reports and/or scores at will?
The background: One the eve of my relocation from ND back to Texas, I was informed that because of a $5000 collection that was slapped on to my report recently, I am no longer qualified to receive a mortgage. Bad stinking news to get while they're loading up the truck. So now we will rent, rather than buy, and the game is on.
The tl;dr background: About nine years ago my family moved in to a new house with my MIL. We rented both our previous home as well as hers. We found a tenant for ours that was a landlords dream. We decided to give someone a break on the MIL's house, which proved to be a big mistake. After failing to pay rent for two months she skipped out in the night, leaving piles of crap (literally, piles of dog s* in the garage) for us to clean up. We borrowed some money and did a big fix-up on the house. Rented it to a nice young couple. Then they broke up. Then they broke their lease. Then our other tenant also moved out. Then we couldn't find anyone to rent either place. Then paying three mortgages started taking it's toll. Then foreclosures, collections, charge-offs, the whole bit. It was quite the disaster.
Now, for the last five years (or so) we have paid every bill on time, never exceeded our credit, made few applications for new credit, and have generally been very well-behaved financial citizens. Indeed, it has taken a long time for the badness to fade away, although some old items have been allowed to linger since the dark times. We've still been able to buy a couple of used cars and get a mortgage on a home in ND a couple of years ago. We were also approved for a $225k mortgage prior to our relo to Texas. Then we weren't. A dark cloud has once again formed, for reasons as of yet unknown. We have a couple of months of temp. housing, but that's not enough time to get our credit fixed, even if it turns out to be a mistake. So now, efforts begin in earnest. I've got plenty of motivation (read: rage and anger), so I look forward to doing everything I can to free my reports from all blemishes, but I want a cohesive strategy. I've got plans for who to contact, how to approach them, expectations for what I might need to pay, and what I shouldn't, but what I need is a way to gauge my progress over time. So, which credit reporting service do you use?
