Pulling my own Credit Reports

[Beans007]

Hi,

I'm really clueless about what affects credit or not.  I stumbled on this forum yesterday and feel a little more comfortable on the subject.  I pulled my credit report by following links on freecreditreport.com  back in early Feb of this year.  I heard from people that you shouldn't pull your credit reports no more than 1 every six months to a year.  When i saw this site I see many people have pulled the report up to 2 times per month.  I want to buy a house soon, and want to really monitor my credit.  What is the best way to be able to pull my credit report for monitoring without hurting my score in the process.  PLease let me know which services are best for low money, (10 bucks a month or less).  Thanks for your help.

--newbie beans

[llecs]

You'll never damage your score by pulling your own reports. Some of us pull daily.

I'd suggest subscribing to a CMS that can pull daily. There's not many out there, but I use NatCity's ID protect (only available if you have a National City account) and also use Creditchecktotal. Both allow you to pull all 3 reports every 24 hours. CCT is fairly common here and runs as much as $30/mo. I think you can wrangle them down to $20 if you tried hard enough.

As with any CMS, except for ScoreWatch via myFICO (monitors EQ only), you should ignore the scores. None of the scores out there other than ScoreWatch's are FICO scores. Their advice is useless too. I'd suggest pulling yopur reports and as you see a major change, then pull your correspondiong FICO report to see the score change.

[Beans007]

Thank you for your response, I will check it out. 

But i got confused on one part,  creditchecktotal will give youReports daily but not FICO Scores? 

If this is true, where would you get FICO score, and how often should you get it for what cost and where?

Thanks for your patience with my Newbienesss

[llecs]

Nope. CCT doesn't offer FICO scores. They offer their own scoring system called PLUS scores. Lenders don't use these scores and would be different that your FICO scores if pulled on the same day.

There aren't too many options to get your FICO score, outside of a lender providing them for you. You can get your EQ FICO score from myFICO.com or directly from Equifax.com (they partnered up). You can get your TU FICO score from myFICO.com or from transunioncs.com (note the -cs). Regretfully, as of mid-February, EX no longer allows consumers to pull their own score.

The frequency at which you pull your two reports is totally up to you. Our (DW and I) goal is to buy a home. As a result, we are watching our score like a hawk and pull our FICO reports several times each month. We are still trying to figure out the cause and effect of this or that. Every little extra point helps at app time.

The cheapest place to get your FICO score (and report) is through myFICO. Google "myFICO discount codes" and you'll save a couple bucks per report. I also have ScoreWatch (monitors EQ nad provides score alerts). Via that service, you can get your EQ FICO reports for $10 something.