Getting your free credit score can help you manage your financial report card. Your credit score is how lenders view you from a financial perspective and having a higher credit score get you access to the best market interest rates.
The good news is you can get your free credit score online. Most of the services we review provide free credit scores as well as explanations of what actions are helping or hurting your scores. In addition, each service may offer credit monitoring to help you see when your score changes.
We’ve done the research for you by signing up and actually using the most popular services. Our final independent evaluations of which credit monitoring services came out on top are below. They’ll also monitor your credit scores for any changes and send you an email alert or text when a change occurs.
What Hurts Your Credit Score
If you are like most people you probably would love to boost your credit score. This is a good idea in order to get better credit interest rates. But there are many hidden factors that could actually hurt your credit score.
1. Closing Accounts: If you are trying to reduce your debt you might consider cutting up your credit cards and closing your accounts. But this can actually work to lower your credit score. The reason being is many lenders look for long term credit experience. So closing that credit card that you’ve had for several years can actually reduce your credit score. In order to show lenders you have long term credit experience, consider keeping credit card accounts you have held for a long time.
2. Avoiding Credit: Many people hate debt. And while living debt free is a great thing, it can actually make getting a loan or credit card much more difficult. Again lenders are looking for credit experience and history in making you a loan. So avoiding credit can cause your credit score to decline. Perhaps a better way to live debt free would be to have a couple credit cards which you charge to each month but pay off at the end of the month. This will show lenders you can manage your credit and help boost your score.
3. Lowering Your Credit Limit: To prevent yourself from going into debt too much, you might think lowering your credit limit is a wise choice. But a portion of your credit score is based on what percentage of your available credit you use. So if you have a credit limit of $5,000 and $1000 of that credit is used then you are at 20% usage. But if you lower your credit limit to $2,000 you are suddenly using 50% of your credit limit. This can impact your credit score negatively.
If you want to boost your credit score, the best way is to begin by getting your free credit score.
What Can Credit Score Monitoring Provide?
Getting your free online credit score can help you manage your credit better. As shown above there are many services online that provide free credit scores and some of them also have upgrade options where you can get credit monitoring. Credit monitoring helps you manage changes in your credit such as new accounts, and changes to public records. Credit monitoring as well as your free credit score is very helpful in helping you determine if you have been a victim of fraud, identity theft or errors on your credit.
Credit score monitoring can also help you plan major credit purchases in the future. The higher your credit score the better terms you’ll get on credit taken out.
While monitoring your credit score is helpful, it does have some limitations. For instance, if you have credit score monitoring and find fraud on your credit, the monitoring service does not fight the claim for you. You’ll need to dispute your claim with the three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
In general disputing items on your credit is a pretty easy. But the trick is to know there is an item to dispute, which is why credit score monitoring is so important.
Free Credit Score Services: What to Look For
When evaluating a credit score monitoring service, what should you look for? First you should consider what exactly is necessary for you. Different services have different options.
Here are some of the initial things you should consider:
Credit Monitoring
Credit monitoring allows you to manage your credit score. It should not be confused with unlimited credit access as it alerts you when there are changes to your credit scores. Before signing up for credit monitoring, be sure to check the terms of each service. Some service do provide unlimited viewing of your credit score while other do not. Also since there are three credit bureaus, make a note if all three scores are monitored.
It is important to know that using a credit monitoring service does not ding your score. It will only pull a soft credit inquires and not hard inquiries that impact your credit score.
Support
It is important to select a service with excellent support. The best credit score services are easy to contact by telephone, email or chat.
While a credit score service cannot directly contact your creditors and request changes to your credit, you can file a dispute on the Experian, TransUnion and Equifax websites. By law the credit bureaus have to respond to your dispute.
Often overlooked by many consumers is selecting a credit monitoring service that can support you when you lose your wallet, need a credit freezes or fraud support.
There are a lot of free credit score offers online and it can be confusing so make sure you research and select the best option for your needs.
