hey peeps, what is the best/cheapest way to track actual FICO scores from all bureaus? Archived From: Finance |
I'd like to track mine if the price is right. I currently check my report from each bureau once a year and that's it. I'm looking to raise my score for a potential refi in 6-9 months
what do you use?
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use myFICO.com with discount codes. That is your best. cheapest rout. It will be about $13 PER REPORT/ SCORE. Meanwhile use TrueCredit to monitor the 3 cra and your FAKO.
myFICO is the only way to get actual fico scores. All the other products are fako's.
Sign up for the Citi Platinum American Express card with a $99 annual fee. You get free Citi Identity Monitor with all 3 credit reports and 3 credit scores (and many other perks), the reports are only updated monthly. $99 / 12 = $8.25 a month.
Here's a guy that compares all 4 ways to get your score, both FICO and FAKO
http://www. my credit strategy dot com/CreditScore.html
There are no spaces in the link, for some reason it would not allow those words together
Ross29 said:tuffghost said:myFICO is the only way to get actual fico scores. All the other products are fako's.I dont think thats true, my WAMU card gives me a free fico score once a month.But the WAMU card gives you a "Bancard FICO score" whereas OP needs to see the score that the mortgage broker/bank will see.
I found a deal for daily pulls from all three bureaus from National City Identity Protection. Plus TU FAKO.
Tracking actual FICO (realFICO) on a daily basis would cost you a lot.
Here are your options in the order of cheapest:
1. Tracking only your Equifax realFICO will cost you around $8 / mo. You can do that at www.myFICO.com or at Equifax. Product is called Score Watch. Use a discount coupon to reduce the rate. If you sign up annual, you will save even more.
You will get score updates when your score changes, but you will not be able to pull a new report WITHOUT paying extra. When you sign up first time, you get 2 free reports, i.e you can pull any time you want to. But you are limited to 2.
2. Tracking your Transunion realFICO no more frequently than monthly can be done at about $4 / mo. Sign up FICOŽ Quarterly Monitoring using a one-time, temporary credit card. After credit card expires, the program will be canceled by the web-site automatically. You can sign up again in a few days. One caveat: not sure if you will get an updated score. Sometimes the website might simply show the old copy. If you want at least 90 days, you will get a new score. Essentially, this will cost you $4 / quarter or $15 / year, and you will get your realFICO score 4 times.
3. Experian. Pay $13 a pop.
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As many people here have mentioned, you can use CreditSecure or TrueCredit or a number of other programs to get fake scores daily at about $10-$12 / month. You might be able to still get an idea about your real scores by looking at your fake scores.
At a very high level, there is a correlation between the realFICO and fake scores, but you might see situations when realFICO goes up but fake scores go down, and vice versa.
I checked my Fico scores in December by using a method similar to what the above poster recommends. Note that I only wanted to check them once, not on an on-going basis during the year.
My memory is a bit hazy on the details, but I think the below is correct:
1. I think that the Score Watch (Equifax) program can be cancelled before the end of the first month without requiring payment, so I cancelled at the end of my first month and therefore didn't pay to get the 2 free Equifax fico reports (one at the beginning of my subscription and one at the end of the month, right before I cancelled). (Or maybe I paid for this one, and the one below was a free trial.)
2. I think that the Quarterly Monitoring (Transunion) program can also be cancelled before the first quarter is up -- as far as I know, there is no need to use a one-time-only credit card just to cancel it -- I simply called customer service and they gave me no problems with the cancellation.
I think with this one, you do need to pay for the first quarter --- or maybe THIS is the one that you can try free for a month and instead you have to pay the first month of Score Watch... I don't remember.
3. I paid $13 for the Experian fico report.
Summary: All in all, to get the 3 reports at the same time, I made a straight $13 purchase, one quarterly or monthly subscription which I was able to cancel within the free-trial period, and one quarterly or monthly subscription which I just paid one "unit" of for around $4 to $8: I do remember that I got all 3 companies' reports for around $20 or so. This was far cheaper than any other solution I could find.
I'm not a Peep!
7yrsale will get you 25% off at myFICO.com, just buy the auto-renew for $42, then cancel it later, saving another $5ish. Should be $32 for all three, which IMO is worth it just for 'calibrating' one's FAKO product of choice, in my case privacymatters123 (the $30/year deal). Results below.
myFICO
TU-760
EQ-721
EX-718
PM123
TU-765
EQ-708
EX-750
TU was pretty close, as would be expected. PM was way off on EX.
My Citi Professional card shows on all three reports. This is common knowledge, just throwing that out for those that may not know. No other Biz cards (Disc, Chase, etc) show on the myFICO accounts page, but they do turn up on PM123.
I suppose I'll wait until this summer when it's time to pay back the first mini-AOR and everything clears to go for round 2.
PM123 is what it is (FAKO)
Not sure if posting will help others figure out the "spread", but after looking at the example above, PM123 could just be a random number. 
PM123
TU - 777
EX - 773
EQ - 783
myFICO
TU - 794
EX - 808
EQ - 813
Thanks to Studiddy for the 25% off code.
NantucketSunrise said:I checked my Fico scores in December by using a method similar to what the above poster recommends. Note that I only wanted to check them once, not on an on-going basis during the year.
My memory is a bit hazy on the details, but I think the below is correct:
1. I think that the Score Watch (Equifax) program can be cancelled before the end of the first month without requiring payment, so I cancelled at the end of my first month and therefore didn't pay to get the 2 free Equifax fico reports (one at the beginning of my subscription and one at the end of the month, right before I cancelled). (Or maybe I paid for this one, and the one below was a free trial.)
2. I think that the Quarterly Monitoring (Transunion) program can also be cancelled before the first quarter is up -- as far as I know, there is no need to use a one-time-only credit card just to cancel it -- I simply called customer service and they gave me no problems with the cancellation.
I think with this one, you do need to pay for the first quarter --- or maybe THIS is the one that you can try free for a month and instead you have to pay the first month of Score Watch... I don't remember.
3. I paid $13 for the Experian fico report.
Summary: All in all, to get the 3 reports at the same time, I made a straight $13 purchase, one quarterly or monthly subscription which I was able to cancel within the free-trial period, and one quarterly or monthly subscription which I just paid one "unit" of for around $4 to $8: I do remember that I got all 3 companies' reports for around $20 or so. This was far cheaper than any other solution I could find.
Experian costs $15 now. But if you just want the Experian score one time, why not sign up for Triple advantage for the free trial which includes a score?
Actually I don't think the score you can buy from Experian is the FICO score. Its the PLUS score. I think you have to buy your Experian FICO score from myFICO.
If TransUnion has electronically banned you...you cannot get a report over the internet.
ES
No one mentioned costco idguard? How's costco idguard? is that Fico or FAKO? It is a lot cheaper ($7.99 for ex memeber), and gives 3 reports, right?
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