which fico to buy from myFICO????

[Anonymous]

So still rather new here and I want to buy the fico reports from here.  I am just curious if I buy the quaterly report why do I pay monthly? Is it just the scores that update quarterly or do the actual credit reports update monthly or quarterly?  Should i get the single FICO score? Just a little confused and cant find a good thread on it.  Thank you in advance.

[Anonymous]

honestly would it make more sense to buy the single report for all three bureaus for $60 once a quarter and save $30 per quarter? instead of 30 per month? I guess I am not understand why you are paying extra MONTHLY for a QUARTERLY report? Am I missing something here or did I miss something in the products page that would explain why I aam being bille monthly or extra features I would recive with the quarterly 3 bureau report?  Thanks for any clarification you might be able to give.

[CredStudent]

I use the qaurterly and personally think it's worth it. With the qaurterly service you get to see all(I think 29) FICO scores updated qaurterly along with your new reports(EXP, TU, EQ). But you also get alerts everytime anything on your report changes ie new accounts, balance changes, etc and with each alert a new FICO 8 score which shows how each alert changed your score. So a couple times a month (when credit cards report, car loan reports, etc) I get a new FICO 8 score. I dont know if that answers your questions but thats been my experience with it.

[Anonymous]

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@CredStudent wrote:

I use the qaurterly and personally think it's worth it. With the qaurterly service you get to see all(I think 29) FICO scores updated qaurterly along with your new reports(EXP, TU, EQ). But you also get alerts everytime anything on your report changes ie new accounts, balance changes, etc and with each alert a new FICO 8 score which shows how each alert changed your score. So a couple times a month (when credit cards report, car loan reports, etc) I get a new FICO 8 score. I dont know if that answers your questions but thats been my experience with it.

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Hey CredStudent!  Great response.  Slight caveat...  the "alert" feature is not triggered every time anything changes.  The alerts happen only when certain kinds of "trigger" events happen.  Really important things can change on your report that do not count as triggers.  Thus you could have major score changes that you don't know about until much later --  and when you do find out about it, the accompanying explanation won't be the reason for the score change (which may have happened weeks ago).

I am not bashing the product -- it's just important to have realistic and limited expectations regarding what the alerts will tell you.  There are large numbers of posts on the Forum every month from people who get an alert and are confused.  They think (naturally) that every change to the report was alerted and therefore that the explanation must correspond to the latest change in their score.

[Anonymous]

Hey Erikkis34.  Can you tell us more about what your goals are?  It sounds like you want some kind of service that will help you track your credit scores and reports.  There's no single right product for everyone.  Some solutions are cost-free, some cost more money.

Do you have any needs for credit any time soon?  Like in the next 6-12 months?  For example a house or a car?

Have you ever pulled your credit reports before?  Have you ever seen your credit scores before?  When?

Do you anticipate making a lot of changes to your credit profile soon?  (Paying down a lot of debt, etc.)

Do you have a credit card that supplies you with a free credit score?  If so, what?

It sounds like you may be on a budget, and want to be careful about paying more money than you absolutely need for a credit monitoring service.  Is that right?

The answers to these questions are all important -- without knowing them it's hard to know exactly what the right solution would be for you.

[Anonymous]

Background

I haven't had credit in years (8-12 years ago) I have just payed cash for everything. I had my own business for 5 years and now have a regular job at a top 20 company on Fortune 500 list. So years ago I really messed up when the casino I worked for closed my section. I repoed a car and ran up some collections. They are all mostly gone. A few scheduled to come off late this year (december) then no more baddies period. The company that bought the car debt is still showing and I challenged that on the 2 bureaus left showing ( Equifax and experian). It has been longer than 7 years since the Repo and even the original company ( road loans) no longer shows on any credit report. So that should come off soon. So I started my first card with Usaa as a secured 500 card in August 2015. A day later got a quicksilver one for 300. Score was low 500s according to CK. Used it a bunch paid off multi times monthly. At the 3 month mark CLI luv button  and went to 800. Then in Jan I got another quicksilver one (300) and a Barclays rewards 500 limits. Experian score 608 CK 590ish. Now cap one qs1 is 1300 and other qs1 is 800 limit Barclays and Usaa the same (500). Navyfed gave me a cash rewards card for 2000 limit and a car loan for 12k.

Currently I have an experian subscription for $20 a month and it is showing me 676 and barclays chowing me the same.

My QS1 cards have access to credit report as does barclays and USAA card. 

And to answer your questions

Yes I make the 2 year mark at my job in sales in september and then i can prove my commission and I am going to buy a home soon after. May wait for all baddies to drop off December time frame. So in the next 12 months for sure.

Yes I had to challenge some info and I look at full reports.  I worked finance and sold cars for a car lot for a years so I am fairly familiar with credit reports in general.

Most recent scores are Experian (from experian app) 676.  Navy fed said my TU score is 632 when they extended me my car loan.  Since this is frist installment on credit i anticipate it raising score soon. Cap one says TU is 625.  Barclay says TU is 670. All i have for equifax is CK FAKO of EQ 626 and TU 613.

No i do not plan on util going about 30% but it could depending on how long my newborn is hospitalized. perhaps as high as 50% but would be payed off with 2 months to less than 5%.  Plan on keeping it low. 

Yes have cards that supply with scores see above.

Not on a budget whatsoever.  My main deal is i want the best deal for my money.  If that happens to be $50 a month then so be it as long as I am getting a GOOD service for the money.  My credit and buying a home does have a dollar value and I will spend money on it.  I would be willing to go more if neccessary. Just need ideas and suggestions.  

Sorry for the long post but I thought it might be a good idea for oyu to understand where i am coming from and where I am going. THank you in advance!

[Anonymous]

Well, you can get lots of feedback from other folks here.

You are like me in that you don't like paying money that you don't need to.  My approach is to use free tools (e.g. Credit Karma) for credit reports as often as once a week and rely on credit cards with their free FICO scores.

There's no good solution for you.  On the one hand, you have a desire to buy a house at the end of this year.  Thus there's a real strength in getting the big package of scores through MyFICO, since they are the only service to give you your mortgage scores.  The problem is that your credit profile will be changing so much through the end of this year -- CC utilization going up to 50% at points all your derogs coming off, etc.  So it's unclear to me how much advantage getting your mortgage scores would be since they are likely to change so much.

If you are willing to postpone your home purchase till next year, then you have a clearer path in my mind: watch your credit reports, work with people here on improving your reports so that, when you do pull your mortgage scores at the end of the year, they are in good shape.  In such a scenario I wouldn't see much advantage to paying money for a bajillion scores until after your profile is clean and stable.

[Appleman]

You cannot beat myFICO if you want to check all of the various flavors of FICo scores. As you notes, it is a bit costly and does not update the report very often (yearly or quarterly).

I recommend you try a variety of service. Try out Credit Check Total as this will only cost you$1. Cancel within the 7 days and they will offer you half price for the next 5 years. There you get an updated report from all 3 bureaus once a month (Daily on EXP). The only downside I have found is that you only get one flavor of FIOC, FICO8.

Those below are all free (the entry level product) and worth a try IMO.

Credit Karma

Credit Sesame

Wallet Hub

Capital Credit

Good luck, I bet you would have some good advice for those in the Auto Loan section.

[Anonymous]

What is a good service that can provide info about soft pulls as well? I am trying to track navy fed soft pulls and AR's.  

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

What is a good service that can provide info about soft pulls as well? I am trying to track navy fed soft pulls and AR's.  

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That's a good question that appears to come up fairly often here.  Almost no third-party services (myFICO, credit Check Total, Credit Karma, etc, etc.) give you info on soft pulls.  This is because a soft pull is by definition only something that the creditor initiating it and the consumer is allowed to see.  A third-party service able to view your soft pulls would have access to information they are not supposed to be able to see (namely all the people who have done soft pulls).

So typically if you want to see your softpull info you have to go through an interface like AnnualCreditReport.com -- which business can't use to pull your credit (only consumers).  I haven't heard of any CMS (credit monitoring service) that can pull all three reports and which also has access to softpull data on them.  I think there might be one CMS that can do this but it only works for one bureau.

BTW I was thinking some more tonight and I agree that CCT might be a good compromise for you.  You'll get one credit report and FICO 8 score monthly for TU and EQ, and you'll get the same thing daily for EX.  $15/month may be a good fit for that.  When you get to a place where all your negatives have fallen off and your profile is otherwise in great shape, then you can get all your scores at myFICO.z