topic Re: Which MyFico Product? in General Credit Topics

Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 14:43:16 GMT

For those with a subscription (or those who have had one in the past), which do you use and/or recommend and why? Thanks!

Re: Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 16:43:22 GMT

I have had a myFICO subscription three times before. My own style is to sign up for the MF Ultimate $30 package. I grab all my reports and scores, then cancel a week later. I do this once every 12-24 months -- just depends on how how much I feel like seeing all of my scores.

So I end up spending an average of $20 a year to myFICO. I do this because I don't know of a simple way to see my mortgage scores and FICO 9s. A snapshot every 1-2 years is more than enough for me.

All other months I use the many free options that are out there for tracking my FICO 8 scores and reports.

Re: Which MyFico Product?

SouthJamaica — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 18:42:01 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
For those with a subscription (or those who have had one in the past), which do you use and/or recommend and why? Thanks!

There's no doubt that the best one is the 3-bureau ongoing reports with monthly update, but at $39.95 it's very pricey.

Re: Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 18:46:41 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
For those with a subscription (or those who have had one in the past), which do you use and/or recommend and why? Thanks!
There's no doubt that the best one is the 3-bureau ongoing reports with monthly update, but at $39.95 it's very pricey.

My thoughts exactly...$479.40/year for this is quite pricey! I realize it gives great information, but wow! Even the one that updates quarterly is $359.40/year which seems a very high.

Anyone know of promo codes, discounts, coupons, etc. that could bring either of those down a bit?

Thanks for your responses.

Re: Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 18:56:24 GMT

I have only signed up for a myfico subscription once and mostly use free or lower cost options to monitor my scores. I personally don't see the need for monthly or quarterly full reports with many fico versions until I am preparing for a mortgage in a few more years.

However, I did want a snapshot of all my scores while implementing AZEO so I signed up for myfico ultimate 3B earlier this year. In order to maximize the value of the $30 subscription I also tested having 0 revolving balance, 1/5 cards reporting with a ~25% individual utilization, and then up to 4/5 cards with a balance before the month subscription ended. I had enough previous data points to separate the impact of increased individual utilization from the number of cards reporting a balance with some confidence although I am still a little unsure of one myfico alert and fico 8 score that didn't fit the usual pattern. If I were to do it again I would not choose a short month like February, but I did get most of the data points I wanted.

Re: Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 19:14:28 GMT

For $9.95/month (EXperian Credit works, TruIdentity (free) and TrustedID (free)), I get daily report updates on all 3 CRAs, ability to lock and unlock in seconds and daily EX FICO 8 update. I supplement this with $1 CCT if I really want to know my TU and EQ scores (have done it once ever in September) and can't wait for my Discover and Citi (I know it's bankcard 8) monthly updates. I feel I have everything I need with this setup and it provides more value for less than most alternatives.

Re: Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 20:02:20 GMT

Thanks!

@Anonymous wrote:
For $9.95/month (EXperian Credit works, TruIdentity (free) and TrustedID (free)), I get daily report updates on all 3 CRAs, ability to lock and unlock in seconds and daily EX FICO 8 update. I supplement this with $1 CCT if I really want to know my TU and EQ scores (have done it once ever in September) and can't wait for my Discover and Citi (I know it's bankcard 8) monthly updates. I feel I have everything I need with this setup and it provides more value for less than most alternatives.

Re: Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 21:37:06 GMT

We can guide you a bit better if you tell us more about what your credit related plans are in the next two years. Are you planning to buy a car or a house? And have you seen your FICO scores lately -- and if so what are they?

Your signature says that you are in the garden for the foreseeable future. I can see why -- it would be an understatement if I said that you had plenty of cards already. (Looked like it was 19-20.) If you already have a gazillion cards and you are not planning to buy a car or a house soon, maybe just checking your reports and FICO scores monthly would be enough? You can do that for free.

Re: Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 22:01:08 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
We can guide you a bit better if you tell us more about what your credit related plans are in the next two years. Are you planning to buy a car or a house? And have you seen your FICO scores lately -- and if so what are they?

Your signature says that you are in the garden for the foreseeable future. I can see why -- it would be an understatement if I said that you had plenty of cards already. (Looked like it was 19-20.) If you already have a gazillion cards and you are not planning to buy a car or a house soon, maybe just checking your reports and FICO scores monthly would be enough? You can do that for free.

I would potentially want to buy a house in Spring or early Summer 2019. You are correct that I have plenty of revolving credit, so my "needs" are met. I have a car payment at .99% on a 2016 with under 35K miles, so I'm okay there. I have student loans (yes, STILL) that have been consolidated (back in 2003) and are being paid at 2.75% fixed with that loan being 53-54% paid. Total between those 2 installment loans is approximately $84K. I don't carry balances on any of my revolving accounts and only 2 have an annual fee, Barclays AA $95/yr and CSP $95/yr. I don't consider myself a "churner," but if there is a card I would find some continued utility in having that has no AF and a SUB, I would definitely consider applying. The "Garden TBD" is mainly due to my desire to at least test the waters of buying a home about a year from now. My current Fico 8 Scores are 722 EQ 730 TU 717 EX.

Re: Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 22:10:51 GMT

The possible/likely mortgage should drive everything. Have you recently seen your mortgage scores? The Ultimate ($30 version, cancel after getting the scores) would be a nice choice for you. I would not do that until you have almost all of your cards reporting $0 -- the mortgage models appear to like that.

Unless your mortgage scores are much higher than your FICO 8s (very improbable) I would stay in the garden until you own your new home. You should be trying to get every extra point you can. If you suspect that you will not have a 20% down payment, then you'll need PMI and mortgage scores of 760+ are needed for best rates there.

Re: Which MyFico Product?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 22:17:07 GMT

My middle mortgage score is 710 now, and I plan to use my VA loan (no PMI). I agree, garden until that trigger is pulled and increase my mortgage score! I haven’t always had decent credit, so I tend to want to watch it very closely!

Re: Which MyFico Product?

FiveOhFour — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 19:19:35 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
For $9.95/month (EXperian Credit works, TruIdentity (free) and TrustedID (free)), I get daily report updates on all 3 CRAs, ability to lock and unlock in seconds and daily EX FICO 8 update. I supplement this with $1 CCT if I really want to know my TU and EQ scores (have done it once ever in September) and can't wait for my Discover and Citi (I know it's bankcard 8) monthly updates. I feel I have everything I need with this setup and it provides more value for less than most alternatives.

Here’s my think with daily pulls. What’s the point, for most users at least, like in your case. If you mean actual daily pulls, as opposed to daily updates included w/monitoring but without (in many cases) updating your report with the new data. If you have monitoring services then you will be alerted for most anything you’d see on a daily, and anything not included in monitoring is of little consequence, I began to feel like I was paying for nothing w/daily pulls, I refreshed daily and am almost never to any result & if there was one monitoring caught it usually. Unless you have a specific reason to pay up for monitoring/ & especially daily pulls. Free Monitoring usually suffices, or at least cheaper. monitoring + Very affordable pulls like you mentionioned. I agree that Experian, who’s now betrothed to Free Credit score dot com (I wonder how many millions of people were infuriated to discover free credit report dot com =/= free credit score dot com back in the day.) offers some very competitive deals. Unfortunately myFICO changed their 1B monitoring to Experian, which iirc used to be equifax, no? But couldn’t have 2/3 CRA’s FICO scores easily attainable every month for free could ya :/

Re: Which MyFico Product?

FiveOhFour — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 19:30:50 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
For those with a subscription (or those who have had one in the past), which do you use and/or recommend and why? Thanks!
There's no doubt that the best one is the 3-bureau ongoing reports with monthly update, but at $39.95 it's very pricey.
My thoughts exactly...$479.40/year for this is quite pricey! I realize it gives great information, but wow! Even the one that updates quarterly is $359.40/year which seems a very high.

Anyone know of promo codes, discounts, coupons, etc. that could bring either of those down a bit?

Thanks for your responses.

I blame all the people that sign up and get every conceivable score at a discounted rate no less and then cancel. I’ve still got a old 3B monitoring service from them that is $19.99, that was replaced with a couple options and then replaced with the $29 3B monitoring with more scores more frequently and before I could stop complaining that the price had gone up they raised it again to $39, all but ensuring I’ll never use that. This is one of the problems with the new age method of incentivizing new customers and telling longstanding ones to take a hike, same with telecom/television/ISP’s etc. literallly banking on consumer’s being too lazy to change services once introductory rates go up. Now that the Supereme court has ruled THE FCC can declare markets with a single ISP as “competitive” , it won’t be laziness stopping us. 🤬