Which myFICO service do most of you use??

[Anonymous]

I'm mostly curious about the FICO FITNESS CHALLENGErs...you all seem to have a knowledge of your exact FICO score at any and all times with at least one (but very often two) CBs.  Are all of you paying for FICO STANDARD more than once per month??  For both bureaus??  I find this kinda hard to believe...seems like it would get incredibly expensive.

I definitely want to stay right on top of my credit, but i'm curious about how to monitor it on a weekly/bi-weekly basis without spending a fortune.

Any advice?

[llecs]

Everyone uses something different based on their needs, activity in rebuilding credit, etc.

In my case, DW and I are going to apply for our first mortgage within 2 weeks. Knowing what happens to our credit real time is very important for us. We both subscribe to a daily puller CMS called creditchecktotal. We pull those reports 7x/week. Aside from that, we also subscribe to EQ's Credit Complete (for DW) and ID Patrol for myself. We use that to get access to the soft inquiries and you can see the full 7-yr history on EQ for both. With CCT, we'll pull our EX reports to track those softs and it's easy to pull TU. A CA doing a soft is indicative that one may soon report. Finally, we pull our free reports via annualcreditreport.com once a year.

Aside from monitoring, we also want to track our FICO scores since the scores from CCT are FAKOs. We both have SW to track our EQ FICO. DW also uses TU Quarterly Monitoring via myFICO to get a new report quarterly. Because we want to track changes to our scores (ours changes probably 10-15 times each month as CCs update), we'll pull a new FICO report for both TU and EQ up to twice per month. Once we move in and all is done with the home, then we'll settle back to a monthly pull or even quarterly.

Cost? I don't want to think about it. I think CCT runs $42 for the both of us ($22 on one and $20 on the other). Credit Complete I think is $15 or so IIRC. ID Patrol is $15. SW is under $10/mo after using a myFICO discount code. DW's TUQM runs under $10/mo after code. Finally the pulls are $12 for TU and $10.95 for EQ after the discounts. I don't want to do the math but you get the idea. We came into this with excess credit baggage (and not the good kind either).

IMO, cost doesn't matter. If it costs $200/mo, it would still be worth it. The info from the reports is vital in the repair process. IMO, you can't put a price tag on knowledge that you know will help in rebuilding credit.

[britishbooklady]

We subscribe to both EQ-ScoreWatch and TU-QuarterlyMonitoring and, like Ilecs, we used a discount code (found by doing a Google search) when we initially signed up so SW is $9.71/month and QM is $3.71/month for each of us. We also subscribe to Credit Check Monitoring through USAA ($12.25/month each) which allows us to pull a 3-bureau credit report everyday. 

I love SW...it's, by far, the most useful IMO. If you adjust your Alert settings to your current FICO score, it'll send you an alert any time it changes one way or the other. Just make sure you edit your Alert settings each time it changes. I really wish the TU-QM worked that way too. 

My advice is to find a 3-bureau monitoring service first...one that allows you to do a daily pull at no extra charge. That way, you can see if there have been any significant changes to your reports first (like a CA being deleted, or a recently paid off CC updated) before you pay to get your most recent FICO score.