@Anonymous wrote:Hi,
Not sure if I posted in the right place. I have been looking at the Fico products on here. To be honest, I'm not sure which is the "best" value and which works best for me.
For those who have the Fico product do you pay monthly or just once a year?
I want to track my scores, see all the soft and hard pulls on my reports, and maybe just a little guide to help me along the way. We are not looking to make any new BIG purchase. Just more of a tracking type of thing. I currently use Amex Fico, Credit Karma and Credit Wise, just not sure how accurate those are.Any suggestions?
Thanks!
The only way to get soft pulls is to go to the bureaus; no third party service offers them.
You'll get lots of opinions on this; if you just want general once a month tracking the free scores typically are sufficient; if you want more than that (changes from balance changes aka more frequent updates) then one of the 3B monitoring products here or CCT are really the best two options if you want FICO scores; if you care about more than just FICO 8, then one of the products here is really the only game in town. Or 1B if you only care about one bureau... vis a vis for me if it's not Experian it sorta sucks since that's the file all of my creditors want to see typically.
I guess it really comes down to what you want; Amex is a legit EX FICO 8, CK is Vantage 3.0 as is Credit Tracker / Credit Wise... used in some fraction of lending decisions but not very many: effectively it's the best non-FICO score, but FICO is king.
For my needs, the free scores plus either a 1B or 3B individual pull when I really need it (like a new car, or house, or similar non-trivial purchase) or maybe a once a year 3B pull just to see where I'm at annually, is really sufficient... but I know my files obscenely well and as a result the monthlyish free scores are fine for my purposes.... the data in my opinion is the important part anyway, and can get TU/EQ from Credit Karma anyway which is pretty darned nice for free. If you're more focused on score tracking (like I used to be, now unless I'm testing something don't really care) then one of the paid service offerings makes sense.
I think monthly vs. annual is simply you get a discount for paying the year in advance. If you know you're going to want the service for a year and you can spot the cash now (or float on a CC) do that. If it's just try and see, go monthly.
I'm a CCT fan myself, for the value.
