Sure it’s easy to get your credit report for free, but how about your credit score? Yep, there’s a way to do this, too, without any trial sign ups for monitoring services:
- Apply for a Washington Mutual Credit Card. WaMu credit cards website will show your your FICO Score free of charge when you log into your account. It is based on your Transunion credit report, and is updated once a month.
- Prosper Person-to-Person Lending Prosper Lending provides a free credit grade for prospective borrowers, based on your Experian credit score. They don’t show you your score, but they do rate you on an AA, A, B, C, D, E scoring modal, and show you what the equivalent Experian credit score range for that letter grade is. Full Disclosure: I am signed up as a lender on Prosper.
- LendingClub Person-to-Person Lending
Similar to Prosper, if you start an application to become a borrower at LendingClub they will check your credit on your behalf to find out what rate they will charge you. Instead of a numerical score, you will get a grade like “A2″ or “B3″. Then you can use this key to determine your credit score range. For example, A2 would indicate a score range of 747-769. It is based on your Transunion credit report. - E-Loan Mortgage This site was started to let the consumer shop online for mortgage rates, but E-Loan sells a variety of credit products such as credit cards as well. See this link at E-Loan and scroll to the bottom for Free Credit Score (Credit Score Only) which doesn’t require any trials. It not a FICO-brand score, but is based on your Experian credit bureau information. But keep in mind this is good for one-time only, so you might want to save it for later.
- CreditKarma Currently based on your TransUnion data, CreditKarma offers a daily look at your credit score. The catch is that it’s not a FICO or any other major brand of score (at least that is known), but with this service you can track changes from month-to-month.
It goes without saying that you will be providing a lot of personal information to these sites in order to get your “free” credit score. In addition, I could not determine if a “hard” or “soft” inquiry, which could affect your credit score. If you do take out a loan or take some other additional action, a hard inquiry which will affect your score may result.
Source: mymoneyblog.com
No related posts.
All of these suggestions are NOT FICO SCORES – if you are getting a letter grade – A,B, C, etc, you are getting an Advantage Score which is the new one the credit bureaus are using (combines all 3 of your bureau scores). If you are getting a score based on only ONE credit bureau, as this article mentions, you are also not getting a FICO score – you are getting the proprietary score each bureau uses. Experian has their own, TransUnion has their own, Equifax uses FICO score, and all 3 also offer the combined Advantage Score as well. The only two ways to egt your actual FICO score, which is still the industry standard, is to go through MyFico.com and get it or to get it through Score Watch at Equifax.
Sorry but this article is not accurate. You might get some scores, but they aren’t FICO’s.
I don’t know that it’s absolutely essential to get an FICO score. While credit scores will vary from bureau to bureau, they are all likely to be “in the ballpark” -