free credit scores Archives - Lazy Man and Money

How to Get a Free Credit Score

April 16, 2016 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

If you have been reading this site recently, you know that we are looking into buying a vacation/retirement home. When buying a home, having good credit can save you thousands on mortgage rates. The problem is that most people don’t know exactly where they stand with their credit. I knew I had good credit, but I didn’t know if I’d qualify for the best mortgage rates. This is where getting a credit score comes in extremely handy as this is what is used to determine the rates.

Credit Scores Everywhere!

It turns out that credit scores are not simple things. There are three major credit reporting bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. The information from them go through a formula and out comes a credit score. The most famous formula is the FICO one developed by Fair Isaac and Co. However, each of the credit bureaus have their own score. To complicate matters further, FICO has created a little-used NextGen Score and the three credit bureaus have combined to create a VantageScore. Got all that ;-)? I’m just scratching the surface too. How those formulas work are not exactly transparent.

Getting a FICO Credit Score

Getting a truly free, no-strings attached, credit score is difficult (some would say impossible) these days. As part of my mortgage pre-approval process through USAA, I got a FICO score. It is what is known as a hard pull – which in short means that it will impact my credit score. (How about that for an observer effect?) For more information see hard pull vs. soft pull.

I actually got three FICO scores – one for each credit reporting bureau. I was pretty happy with the 808, 808, 819, on Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion respectively. I also got a little information about the things that adversely impact my credit score. Seems like Experian thinks the amount owned on my accounts is too high. The others didn’t cite this.

Getting Free Credit Scores

The next best thing to a FICO score (in my opinion) is the credit bureaus scores. You can get these for free by going to Go Free Credit. I gave it a try and thought I’d share my results so you can get an idea for what you can expect as well as how much it differs from my FICO scores:

As you can see the numbers went down quite a bit. According to this, I still have a little work to do on my credit. I found it worthwhile to get this report, even though most lenders will use the FICO scores.

I should not that if you get a free score from Go Free Credit as I did, you must agree to sign up for a credit monitoring service at $19.99 a month. This service is free for the first 7 days, so if you decide that you don’t want it, you can cancel it right away costing you nothing. The end result is a truly free credit score from the main credit bureaus.

You may also look to get free credit scores from other sources:

Credit Karma – Credit Karma uses the TransUnion credit report and their own formula to create a credit score. They also provide you with the VantageScore, the score that is a combined measure from all three bureaus. For more information, see my Credit Karma Review. Like Credit Sesame, it’s free to sign up (there’s nothing to cancel and you never need to enter a credit card).
Credit Sesame – Credit Sesame give you a Experian credit score, so in theory it should match the one from Go Free Credit. There’s actually a big difference in mine as Credit Sesame has me with a 817 credit score (see my Credit Sesame Review for more information.) I’ll be placing an inquiry into the services to find out what’s up with that. It’s free to sign up (there’s nothing to cancel and you never need to enter a credit card).

Need more? Check out Cafe Credit for a full comparison of free credit score websites in the United States.

What to do with Your Free Credit Score

A number isn’t very useful if you don’t know how good it is. Once you have your credit score, go see “What is a Good Credit Score?” to find out how you did.

Weekend Personal Finance Links (sore muscle edition)

December 20, 2008 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

My wife persuaded me to go her gym’s Body Pump class yesterday. Not only was my ego hurt by the women doing heavier weights more times than me, but even my finger muscles hurt. That being the case, I’m going to cut right to the chase and get you the links.

From The Money Writers:

What desperation looks like by Bripblap.
Here are eleven (nearly) effortless ways to save money each month as suggested by Frugal Dad.
Don’t compound your investment losses by investing less in down markets and more in up markets writes Generation X Finance.
Million Dollar Journey presents 4 tax free savings account strategies.
The Digerati Life asks Am I Frugal? How I Balance My Efforts To Spend and Save Money.
Looking to earn extra money for the holidays? Here are 10 ways to boost your gift budget by Money Smart Life.
My Dollar Plan looks at rate chasing with high yield savings accounts.
ING posted first ever quarterly loss announces The Sun’s Financial Times.

From others:

Sign up with Upromise before the holidays writes NCN.
Free Money Finance presents ten ways to prepare for higher taxes.
Free credit scores from Credit Karma announces 5 Cent Nickel.

Credit Karma’s Credit Simulator (and Other Credit Tools)

January 13, 2011 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

Last April, I went to Finovate Startup in San Francisco. I was introduced to around 40 companies at the time, and I met a number of their founders personally. One of them was Credit Karma. You may remember that in the past, I told you how you can get, free credit scores from them. It’s important to realize that a credit score is different from a credit report (which are typically free, one per year, from AnnualCreditReport.com.

I got a little off-track with the credit score explanation.Â I meant to report that Credit Karma won Best in Show at Finovate this year. What did they do to earn those honors? I’ll let you know, but first I wanted to mention a couple of other things that I noticed they were up to:

Recommended Credit Cards – They have a section of credit cards that is different than your usual credit card page. These credit cards seem personalized. Since they know my credit is excellent, they show me the cards in the excellent rating. They even have ratings based on what other Credit Karma vote, the approval rate of applications, and what Credit Karma users are actually signing up for.
Improved Credit Karma Blog – As a blogger, I tend to notice blogs – even corporate ones. This one has a lot of information about improving your credit as well as some timely credit news. My favorite is what is a good credit score. That’s exactly what you’d expect from a credit-focused company trying to transition from start-up to market leader.
Credit Simulator – This is the tool that carried Credit Karma to Finovate’s Best in Show award. Let’s pretend you signed up for Credit Karma when I reviewed them last time. Credit Karma gave you a score of 680. It’s not great, but you know you could do better. If you only knew what you could do to help it out. Enter the Credit Simulator. This tool allows you to see how your credit would change in a number of scenarios. Some of them include, adding a new loan, adding a credit inquiry, closing your oldest credit card, allow a monthly account become 30 days overdue, etc. This tool finally gives you some insight to how your credit score is affected. Granted, it’s not a FICO score, it’s a reason estimation.

Here’s one feature to look for in the future. My Credit Karma score dropped, and I didn’t know why. I figured that since Credit Karma is constructing my score from my report, they could tell me what I did to deserve the drop. Unfortunately, they couldn’t tell me what had changed in my account. After talking with the CEO, I have confidence this may be something you’d see in the future from Credit Karma.

Weekend Links – New Kids On The Block Edition

October 12, 2008 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

On Friday, I took one for the team and went with my wife to the New Kids on The Block Edition. Normally, I wouldn’t mind too much, but I had to give up seeing the end of the Red Sox playoff game. When you watch something around 120 regular season games, you kind of want to watch the playoff games. Anyway, the New Kids played all their cheesy boy band songs while I text messaged anyone and everyone I could think of to pass the time.

If you’re a New Kid fan, I’m sure you thought it was great. I have to give them a little credit for pulling off a strong 15 minute finale. They pulled out the Boston Celtics on the large screen (completely unexpected when you are in San Jose). They followed that up with Queen’s We Will Rock You and transitioned into Hanging Tough. I didn’t think I’d be excited by the time Hanging Tough came on, but I have to admit, they finally worked the crowd.

The other notable part of the concert was that with a 100:1 girl to guy ratio, it would have been a good place to pick someone up. For me though, the ratio just meant that I had a 100 person bathroom to myself.

Anyway, here are some links while I turn my attention to the Patriots-Chargers game.

Money Writers

Here are 7 mistakes not to make in a crisis written by Brip Blap.
Generation X Finance says children are becoming prime identity theft targets!
Doctor salaries – not as high as you think explains Million Dollar Journey.
Here are some envelope budget system strategies to take on the road by Frugal Dad.
Digerati Life presents this guide on how to get free credit scores, myFICO credit scores on discount.
Career advice to help you get ahead & feel good about it over at Money Smart Life is full of great tips.
My Dollar Plan looks at the impact of marriage and divorce on your finances.

Others

Five Cent Nickel writes FDIC insurance limits increased to $250k.
Don’t miss ten ways to visualize $10 trillion by Might Bargain Hunter.
Free Money Finance talks about how I cut expenses if I need to (and how you can to).

Free Credit Scores from Credit Karma – No Scam

November 6, 2011 by Lazy Man 30 Comments

Credit Karma is no scam

If you are looking for free credit scores, look no further. Free credit reports have been around for some time. You can get three reports a year by going to Annual Credit Report. Be very careful not to go to other sites, because they usually trick you into signing up for something that you possibly don’t want. One such example is FreeCreditReport.com, which runs commercials on television. They sign you up for credit monitoring that costs $14.95 if you don’t cancel within a 7-day free trial (I’ll show you later how to get free credit monitoring). The Digerati Life has more information on credit reports.

Credit Reports vs. Credit Scores

When I was first learning about credit, I thought a credit report and a credit score was the same thing. In fact, I never thought twice about either one until I bought a house. I only knew that paying my bills on time would pay dividends down the road. (I was right it did.)

Credit Reports – This is the information on how much and what type of credit you have, your payment history, etc.
Credit Scores – This is a number that attempts to reflect the credit risk by using the information in your credit report.

For those familiar with sports and the processing of drafting a player, there’s an easy parallel. A credit report is analogous all the information your scouts have gathered about the player. This can include how strong he is, how fast he is, his hand-eye coordination, etc. A credit score analogous to what a team does with that information to decide what makes one player better than another come draft day. The Colts and the Patriots might have similar reports on a player, but their scores (how they value the reports) will differ.

Get Your Free Credit Scores with Credit Karma

Most people that have gotten credit scores have gotten a FICO score from the Fair Isaac Corporation. This is simply their interpretation of what’s in your credit report. The credit bureaus have their own credit scores as well including Experian’s PLUS, Equifax’s ScorePower, and TransUnion’s credit score. As far as I can tell, it’s very hard to get access to these scores for free, with no strings attached. The exception is Credit Karma. You sign up and you get your credit store for free (you can see mine below).

There might be a small string attached to Credit Karma. You need to surrender your social security number to them. It’s a necessary piece of information required to get your credit report which is needed to determine your credit score. Some people guard their social security numbers with their lives. In that case, perhaps you are better off paying for your credit scores. I’m feel secure in knowing that Credit Karma is putting a great effort behind security and privacy – their entire business relies on it.

Using Credit Karma

I thought I’d write something long and drawn about using Credit Karma. But it really is simple. You sign up and they give you Dashboard that shows your Credit Karma credit score. You can get an update of your credit score any time you want. However, I really like the Credit Compare page. It gives me a view on how I rank vs. the rest of the United States.

Credit Karma Score Reliability

As you can see from my credit ratings below, I have no issues with Credit Karma’s score. It seems to substantiate the teaser mortgage rate that I qualified for 4 years ago. Since I only have my own credit to test, I can only say that it seems very accurate for myself. If anyone else has experience I’d like to hear your story in the comments.

Leadership at Credit Karma

I had a chance to talk with CEO Kenneth Lin at Finovate, a conference for financial start-ups. Unlike real a journalist, I didn’t take notes. If I had a pressing set of questions, I may have, but I just I didn’t have the time to test out the system then. Plus, as Lazy as I am, I’d rather sit and talk with a guy for a few minutes. Usually by that time I can make my decision as to whether the person is full of bovine excrement. I have to say that Mr. Lin passed the test, not a hint of bovine excrement around.

Final Thoughts on Credit Karma

One of the key questions I ask is, how is this company going to make money? As best I can tell, their model seems to be similar to Mint’s… show you offers from advertisers and collect a commission on them.

Another question I ask is, how does this change the marketplace? I think it has potential to be a huge changer for the big credit bureaus. It reminds of when Zecco came out with free stock trades. In my eyes, E*Trade and Ameritrade have to innovate to show that they bring more value for the dollar. I’m not convinced they’ve done that. In the same way, Credit Karma should force the big credit bureaus to give consumers more value for the dollar spent on a credit score. If they can’t adapt Credit Karma will start slowly eating their lunch. In both cases (Zecco and Credit Karma), consumers stand to win big.