You know how the doctor gets you to step up on the scale in his office at your well-visit appointment?
And how you wish you’d stepped on the scale way before your due appointment, to make sure you suffer no embarrassment, and worked to get those numbers down before the visit?
Some nutritionists out there recommend no more than a weekly weigh-in, to avoid disappointment. Others recommend daily weigh-ins.
This talk is all too similar to the talk about credit scores. It’s always on your mind, it requires frequent check-ins, careful monitoring, maintenance, and sometimes, fixing.
Luckily, keeping on top of your score is easy in today’s day and age. There are loads of credit monitoring services out there, and what will be discussed today are the many, free options for credit monitoring. Can’t get better than that. And some even offer daily check-ins.
Chase Credit Journey, hence its name, is a credit monitoring platform that Chase released just a few years back. It uses the Vantage 3.0 scoring model to produce your credit score.
Vantage scores are used a lot less often than the well known Fico when it comes to score modeling, which is a downside to using this platform. However, you still get an approximate picture of your credit score, even if it’s not from the famous Fico.
You also have full access to your credit report, with the information being provided by Experian. This includes your credit accounts and credit history. You can also enjoy the pro-active suggestions that Chase Credit Journey offers, for help on keeping your credit healthy. You can choose to set up alerts when an activity is flagged as suspicious on your account, such as a new account added, your name changed etc.
Your credit report gets updated every 7 days with Chase Credit Journey.
Credit Karma is one of the strongest free credit monitoring services. Viewing and monitoring your credit scores and reports are made easy and free with Credit Karma. It also provides tips and tools on helping you improve your score.
Both Transunion and Equifax are the ones to provide your credit information here, which is what is reflected when you check out Credit Karma.
Here too, the Vantage 3.0 score is used to calculate your credit score, which is not the most used scoring model.
The one advantage it has over Chase Credit Journey, is that it reports from two of the three credit bureaus. Updates happen every 7 days.
WalletHub has a nice twist to it. It is the only free credit monitoring site that gets updated every day. Free updates, on a daily basis. You also get alerts, tips, and tools on how to improve your credit.
However, your credit report on Wallethub is provided by only one of the three credit bureaus, with Transunion being the one.
Also being used is your Vantage 3.0 credit score.
I would say the options that Wallethub provides are good for a service that is updated daily.
Freecreditscore.com is “part of Experian”, as they call themselves. You actually get directed to the usual looking Experian login, but through Freecreditscore.com’s link.
Obviously, it uses your Experian report for credit reporting.
And for the one and only in our list today, this one uses Fico 8 as the scoring model, so your credit score on Freecreditscore.com will be reflecting the Fico 8 scoring model.
The only downside, it is updated once a month.
My feeling, in regular times when there’s no big credit decisions being made, this once a month update can be an excellent resource. Especially considering it’s your Fico score, and not Vantage.
You can also enjoy free credit alerts when there are changes to your Experian account.
Nerd Wallet
Nerd Wallet has some advanced tools to help you improve your credit score.
You can also actually get real-time alerts, as changes happen on your credit report.
Your credit report used is from Transunion, and the credit score is from Vantage 3.0.
Updates here are every 7 days.
Not all too different than some other options we mentioned above, in terms of credit bureau, scoring model, and update frequency.
Credit Sesame has your Transunion credit report, and your Vantage 3.0 credit score. Updates are once a month, although you can get alerts when changes happen on your Transunion report.
What stands out with Credit Sesame is the free insurance plan that claims to refund up to $50,000 in case of being a victim of identity theft. Now that’s a nice bonus for a free credit monitoring service.
Finishing off
Don’t forget, you can mix and match, and use more than one of these services. They’re all free and some have an advantage over the others, such as reporting from more than one credit bureau, updating more often, or using the Fico scoring model. So you can really get the best of all worlds by using a couple of these services simultaneously.
One tip to getting updates from all three credit bureaus, is to pair together Credit Karma, and Freecreditscore.com. Putting the two together will provide you with Transunion, Experian, and Equifax reports.
All free! So avoid potential damage and keep monitoring and weighing in on your credit score.
