Monitor Your Credit Score to Make Sure Everything is On Track
Credit Card Reference, Signing Up for Travel and Reward Credit Cards Won't Kill Your Credit Rating
You can easily keep an eye on your credit score and make sure that everything is going as expected.
Not long ago, it was hard and/or expensive to look at your credit reports. However, over the past few years, the government has passed laws which mandate that banks provide easy access to your credit scores and reports.
Some background information
There are three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) and you have a different credit report from each agency. Your most important credit score is calculated by a company called “Fair Isaac” and is called a FICO score. You wind up having a different FICO score for each credit bureau, reflecting the information in just that company’s report. So you don’t have just one FICO score, you have three. Digging deeper, there are several different variants of each of these FICO scores, so you really have dozens of slightly different scores.
A mortgage lender is going to look at the information from all three credit bureaus. But a credit card company usually only looks at one. Your scores should be relatively close together, so if you just need a rough idea of where you are at, you can use any of your scores as a guidepost.
In addition, some scores are based on a different model called VantageScore. VantageScore is a competitor to FICO, but still has scores in the same range as the classic FICO score. Your VantageScores are usually easier to get in "real-time" and give a rough idea of where you are at. However, because of differences in how the scores are calculated and weighted, your VantageScore can be significantly different from your FICO score. Since your FICO score is much more important, you’ll want to make sure that you periodically access it, even if you use a VantageScore to monitor short-term changes in your credit rating.
Best tools for monitoring your credit
There are no perfect tools for monitoring your credit. Each tool has its own strengths. Depending on your needs, you can use multiple tools to take advantage of each of their individual merits. Here are the tools you should consider:
- Each of your credit card companies is likely to provide free scores on their websites. Most credit cards provide free access to your credit score, just as a benefit of having their card. Once you have a card, you can use the credit card company’s website to check your score whenever you want to (although the scores are only updated every week or every month). This can be the easiest way to get your score, as you don't need to re-enter any of your personal information into a new tool. But the score may not update that frequently and you won't see any more detailed credit score information.
- The most universal way to see your actual credit score is with Discover’s Credit Dashboard. This service is free for everyone, not just Discover card holders, and provides your actual Experian FICO score and an overview of how you are doing on each component. So while you can probably get your FICO score by signing into your existing credit card accounts, everyone can definitely get their scores through this service. However, the Credit Dashboard information is only updated every month and doesn’t provide details about each of your individual accounts. Discover’s Credit Dashboard.
- Credit Karma provides the most detailed information and is the service we most often recommend. Credit Karma updates your information daily and provides detailed information for each of your accounts from both TransUnion and Equifax (only the TransUnion score is updated daily) . However, their credit score is based on the less useful VantageScore, rather than your FICO score. As a result, it is a convenient way to keep track of positive or negative changes to your account, but it isn’t a good way to periodically get your exact FICO score. Credit Karma.
- WalletHub is another good option. Like Credit Karma it displays your Vantage Score, updates your information every day, and provides detailed information about your account. Since it only uses information from TransUnion, it is primarily interesting for people who prefer its user experience over Credit Karma's. WalletHub.
- Your actual credit reports can be retrieved (for free) once per year from an official site, managed by the credit bureaus. These don’t come with a credit score, just the details on your report. There really isn’t much information on your reports that you can’t already see on Credit Karma, but you might want to see what the actual reports look like or access information from Experian. AnnualCreditReport.com.
