[Editor’s note: This article was written when there were limited invites to the free credit monitoring from Credit Karma. Recently they’ve enabled all their users to get free credit monitoring.]
There are two ingredients to a great credit score: diligence and luck. The first you can control. The later you can’t. I have to say that I’ve been blessed with good luck in being able to keep the unexpected expenses away as well as not having my identity stolen. Those who haven’t been as lucky as I have might have found that their credit score isn’t where they want it to be.
This can be a problem when it comes time to buy a home. You may find your dream home, have the down payment, but not be able to swing the payments due to a bad credit score. If you find yourself in this situation, or a similar one, credit monitoring may be for you. There’s only one hitch… credit monitoring agencies are typically very expensive. They often hook you into $15 a month deals billed automatically to your credit card. That’s Netflix money now. Still, in the right circumstances it could be worth it.
However, you know what’s better than having to pay $15 a month? Paying $14! Nah, I’m not going to go all 7-minute abs with this. How about free credit monitoring? I can’t give that everyone, just to the first 150 people who take advantage of it.
When I say free, I mean free. You aren’t tricked into signing up for some other thing that you might not want and have to cancel. You don’t even need to give a credit card.
I know what you thinking at this point: “I’m sold, Lazy! Tell me how to get this fantastic deal already.”
The provider of this is Credit Karma, who I have written about before. They are one of the great ways to get a free credit score. For the first 150 readers who follow this link and sign up you get truly free credit monitoring. (If you are not a member of Credit Karma, you should sign up here first.) The monitoring alerts you when there are changes in your credit report. This can not only be used to help you improve your credit score, but it can also help protect you from identity theft.
It’s not often that I’m able to give this away to so many readers. I (well… we) have to thank Credit Karma for making this available.
Sweet, thanks Lazy Man!
Nice offer! Also, you can get a free copy of your credit report from annualcreditreport.com at any time, one a year for each of the 3 credit bureaus. No need to waste money on any of the monthly monitoring services.
Good point KDB. I try to space my request for reports over the year getting one every four months. However, if you are really actively trying to improve your credit score you may want to be updated more often and this is a way of doing that.
Hey, Lazy Man! Just wanted to update you that as of last week, we now offer free credit monitoring to all of our members! Let me know if you have any questions or feedback.