@soxcited wrote:
Thanks for the great info i did not know how to confirm if i am opted out or not.
I was reading your CMS post and i notice you have removed your suggestions.
What do you personally use to get EX reports? Right now I have CCT and SW.
I was planning on getting TU from myFICO as well but i guess if i do this i wont be able to see the special sections you mentioned.
...And finally chiming back in....
I removed the suggestions to make way for additional needed space. The forums limits how big a post can get and with all of those links, well, I ran out of space so I had to zap something. I did however, repost it later down in the thread somewhere.
I don't recall if I removed this or not, but I recommend looking at reporting and FICO scoring as 2 different things. You can certainly kill too birds with one stone and order EQ and TU FICO reports all the time to monitor the reports, but that would be so costly. So, I always focus on reporting and monitoring first. Just about any CMS offers monitoring minus FICO scores.
First thing you need to figure out are your goals. If you plan to only order quarterly or semi-annually, then it's a whole lot cheaper to pull your FICO reports and then subscribe to a CMS that doesn't allow reports, but does monitoring only. Some of these are just a few dollars a month. If your goal is to actively engage in fixing and cleaning up your credit, then there will be a lot of changes to your report on a monthly basis, at least initially. I'd then recommend a CMS daily puller like CCT or one of the many out there. I've used CCT to pull all 3 in the past. There are some limitations to it like the lack of a full history, mis-reporting of account types, and so on, but IMO, it's worth it. I've also used NatCity's ID Protect and that was a bit better per reporting, you can see a late summary unlike CCT, and so on.
After you figure out reporting, then the FICO scores are gravy. As you see changes to your CRs (TU & EQ), you can then pull a new report to track that score change if that's something you might be interested in or use SW to track changes to EQ only if you know that the change could impact your FICO score.
What worked for me was SW to get the $5 discount on EQ FICO pulls (I pull up to 3x per month) and use a daily CMS whereby I could pull a new FICO report. As changes occur, then I'll pull a FICO Standard report to see those changes. Once we buy a home, then tracking these changes probably won't be as important for me and I may switch to monthly and eventually quarterly for the FICO pulls. DW uses SW, TUQM, and CCT and it works pretty well per tracking changes and so forth.
Those sections I mentioned in the prev. post are only available if you pull your CR directly from the CRA. Be sure to get your free reports once a year via annualcreditreport.com. I also recommend pulling frequently (quarterly or semi-annually) directly from each CRA if there's a lot of things happening or baddies. Those old reports come in handy if a baddie misreports or if you wind up with a split file.
Starting Score: 540