I've been quite determined for the past year or so rebuilding my credit and managed to land two cards in January to help with that. Now, debateing is whether myFICO or CCT would be better to use to check weekly or biweekly on updates on my score, report and utilization stats. Also, I need to check my TU and EQ score since my EX score jumped quite a bit last week. I saw the Ultimate 3B is $30 but I also heard CCT is very good even though it'll be $40 to get my TU and EQ info. Any suggestions?
@Anonymous wrote:My suggest which will come with "kudos" from some and scrutiny from others is to roll with $1 trial memberships from CCT. You can do an unlimited amount of these and you only need to do 2 per month to get 4 3B reports and 4 pulls of your 3 FICO 08 scores. From what I understand, a full membership with CCT only gets you your scores once monthly along with your 3B report once monthly and it obviously costs more money.
At the very least I'd start with a $1 CCT trial membership and see how you like it. If you're ok with cancelling it after a week (automated system, no need to speak to anyone) and starting another a week later, you can roll with that method as long as you'd like.
Even if you do decide to get a full membership with another service, CCT is still great for $1 trials just to get your 3B reports and 3 FICO 08 scores at any moment in time that you want them, instantly.
I'll try that method since I already did the $1 membership back in the beginning of January. I like the EX reports that I get from CCT, just wasn't sure if I get the same type of benefits from using the Ultimate 3B option from myFICO if I did the $30/month option. I think the only other way to at least get a free TU FICO score is to get approved for a card like Discover (or possibly others) that gives you the score for free. Unfortunately, Discover is not on my future list of cards right now.
@marcforza1 wrote:I've been quite determined for the past year or so rebuilding my credit and managed to land two cards in January to help with that. Now, debateing is whether myFICO or CCT would be better to use to check weekly or biweekly on updates on my score, report and utilization stats. Also, I need to check my TU and EQ score since my EX score jumped quite a bit last week. I saw the Ultimate 3B is $30 but I also heard CCT is very good even though it'll be $40 to get my TU and EQ info. Any suggestions?
I found CCT pretty useless, I prefer Experian.com, in which I can update my EX FICO 8 and credit report daily.
You can get your TU & EQ reports (but not FICO scores) for free on a weekly basis from Credit Karma.
To my mind, MyFICO is the gold standard for getting a complete picture, but it costs plenty, and even with the 39.95 monthly product you can only update your full report once a month.
With equifax.com and transunion.com, you can, for a fee, get your reports (but not FICO scores) from each bureau updated on a daily basis
@Anonymous wrote:The thing that jumped out at me is that you want a cost-effective and simple method of checking EQ and TU (especially) for all the info that might be on your reports (CC balances, utilization, general progress and trends, etc.).
Credit Karma.
You don't have to keep signing back up and cancelling, you get fresh reports up to once a week, and it is free. So I can't see any downside to including it in your toolkit, regardless of what else you decide to do.
Karma does not give you your FICO scores, but I encourage you to rethink the need to see your FICO scores every week or even every month. Remember that if some important credit event is approaching, you can always use CCT for a buck to see your latest FICO 8s. Actually, my advice is at first to always pull your CCT scores on precisely the same day and hour that you do your Karma and record them all.. If you were to do that once a month, after three months you would get a pretty clear sense of the way your particular V3 scores differ from your FICO 8. Then you could dial back your CCT pulls to once a quarter, and then eventually twice a year.
There are also free methods for accessing your EX report and EX FICO 8 (once per month).
I add to all of this a once a year membership with myFICO Ultimate 3B (cancel after one week) just to grab all the scores (including FICO 9). But again, my style (if I were you) would be to always time all your pulls to be at the same time as Karma. That way Karma becomes that much more useful throughout the year at assessing where your FICO scores are likely to be.
As you can see, I do encourage the use of the $1 trial. But I also feel like it is an odd loophole that CCT could close and probably will close eventually if people continue to open and cancel dozens of "trials" every year. (There's a limit to how many times one can say with a straight face that one wishes yet one more "trial" of a product.) I base this on my experience of the other community I am part of, which is CC bonus chasers and bank bonus chasers. There, the advice of the veterans is to avoid "abusing" a loophole unnecessarily, which in our experience causes an institution to close it up that much sooner.
And that's what kept me wondering if it's just overkill for me to check it once or every other week. But I do pull CK up every Friday morning while I'm at work since I know that's exactly when it updates. I've had CK for about 8 months and it's been very helpful with trying to rebuild my credit and it shows (just started using MyFICO and CCT on the same day on January 1st). Once I see my updated TU and EX score today I'll definitely try your advise and just check it on Fridays around the 1st of each month. I'll also cancel CCT and then try the trial membership in a few weeks.
@Anonymous wrote:Awesome. I am sure you will do what is right for you.
But let me re-emphasize how valuable I think it might be to create a little spreadsheet for yourself. It could have 7-8 columns. The columns would give the different scores (TU FICO 8, EQ FICO 8, EX FICO 8, TU V3, EQ V3, etc.) and the rows would be the dates you pulled them
Then any time you pull your CCT scores, do it either 10 minutes before or after you pull your Karma scores. Then enter them into your little spreadsheet. Should give you a fairly good sense of how your particular FICO scores differ from your V3.
Many of the rows will just be Krama, but when you do pull CCT, you can also enter those alongside.
In truth, you just need to do basic stuff, and constantly getting on the scale (to strike a weight-loss analogy) may not be necessary. You know the drill: use your cards, keep the amounts they report each month very small, use the SS loan technique if you have no open loans, work with people here for help on getting your derogs removed. That's it. Nothing too fancy, and nothing that pulling your FICO scores many times a year will help with.
Pulling your reports a couple times a month can be real smart, however, especially if you are working on derog removal.
I would also in addition set yourself up with the free report and free FICO 8 from Experian once per month. That's a really nice development that only happened last year I think.
Can somebody remind me what the link is that gives you both?
I started to screenshot my stuff from CCT for when I call to cancel this afternoon. Will try to work on a spreadsheet on Excel this evening. I only use tablets at home so I'm sure it won't be too hard to use Excel on it.
I have myFICO 3B (the $29.95 one), and my husband has CCT, so I can run down the differences.
CCT gives you a 3B report every month -- myFICO gives you a 3B every 3 months
CCT gives you a new EX report and FICO 8 score every day you request it, and EQ, TU FICO 8 scores with the montly 3B report -- myFICO gives you EQ, TU, or EX FICO 8 score with each alert
CCT gives you only FICO 8 scores, myFICO updates all versions of FICO scores every 3 months with your 3B report
They cost the same, although people calling in to cancel CCT will usually be offered half price from what I've heard.
My thoughts: I prefer myFICO's user interface over CCT's. I prefer myFICO 3B overall, although it would be nice to get a 3B report every month. Having said that 3B reports are not the same as getting your actual report, so I am not hung up on getting one more often. But the alerts and the updated FICO 8 scores when they happen are something I do not want to give up at this point, at least not while I'm rebuilding. I also use Experian to get my free EX report and EX score more often than the 3 months. My EX score just went up 26 points and I saw that on the Experian site last Wednesday, but myFICO has yet to notify me since there hasn't been an event that generates an alert since it went up. Since my Cap1 balance is reporting, I would expect to get a myFICO alert Monday or Tuesday that will reflect the score change, so it's really not that bad.
I hope you find the one that works best for you! 