cheap credit report and score

In a recent article I covered what 3 place you could get your cheap credit report from for free, so in this article I going to cover one of those option in a little more detail and show where and how to get a cheap credit score report and walk you through the entire process step by step.

Where To Get Your Cheap Credit Score From

If your looking to get a cheap credit report I recommend getting it from Annual Credit Report. This site is actually the official site setup by Trans Union, Equifax, and Experian to get your free report from, in fact all other credit reporting sites will actually get the same information from this site and in some cases make you pay for the same info you could get for free.

However when it comes to getting your free credit report you will only be able to get each of the 3 credit reports once a year. Although I suggest you don’t get all three of them at one time, instead I recommend you pull one every 4 months. This way you will be able to see your credit reports throughout the year, which will help you track and monitor your credit in case you would happen to spot a mistake or problem.

One final thing I should mention before I move on is that you will be able to get your credit report free but you will have to pay for the score itself, which will cost you around $15. The score you will get can range from 450 which is very low to 850 which is around the highest.

Are you ready to get your cheap credit report and score now? Let’s move on.

How To Get Your Credit Score

Step 1: Pick A State

The first page you will come upon is the home page of the Annual Credit Report where they will ask you to pick the state that you live in currently.

Step 2: Fill In Your Info

Next, once you have selected the state that you live in you will have to fill out some simple and quick information. This will include your full name, date of birth, social security number, and address. However if you have not lived at your current address for more than 2 years you will have to list the previous one as well. Then fill out the security question at the bottom and move on.

Step 3: Pick One Credit Bureau

Next after you are done you will have to pick which credit bureau you will want to get your report from. Again, I suggest you only pick one every 4 months and in my case I picked Trans Union since they were the first one at the top.

Step 4: Answer Specific Security Questions

Next you will be transferred to the Trans Union website where you will be able to get your free report. Once you get to the opening page you will have to click continue to get started. This will bring you to the next page were Trans Union will need to verify your account and that it is really you by asking you a couple of security questions about your accounts.

For example my questions asked my how much the credit limits were on both of my credit cards. If you are not sure about some of this information you may have to get your latest credit card statements out to see what your current credit limits are.

Step 5: Review Your Report

Once you have answered the questions you will be able to see your credit report. Once you get there you will be able to see all of your credit cards and loans that you have. You will also see a chart that shows you the last 48 months of your credit history.

The chart above is a key which shows you if you are current or not with your credit. In the actually report each month will be labeled with either the green box that says OK, or one of the other six boxes. Each credit card and loan you have will have a 48 month history like this, below is a sample of one of my actually credit cards.

Obviously, you can see that the last 48 months on this particular card were very good and I’ve paid them all on time. On the very left side of the chart it shows how many times I was late on my credit card, luckily none at all.

Step 6: Claim You Credit Score

No that we know how to get the report, I will show you how to obtain your cheap credit scores online. To do this all you need to do is click on the button at the top that says Your FREE credit score.

At this point just fill out all of you current information like email address, social security number, create a user name, password, and security questions. Like I mentioned before this will cost you, Trans Union charges a $15 a month fee with the first seven days free and you can cancel at anytime.

A Final Thought…

As a final thought to this article I should mention how important it is to get you credit score and check it regularly. You never know what might be on your report and if you do find something that doesn’t belong there make sure you contact the company you got it from and dispute it in writing.

This may take some time to get done but can be one of the fastest ways to cleaning up your credit score and improving it.

Chris

Recently I’ve been searching around the net for ways to get a cheap credit score and report. After doing all of the research, I came up with three possible sites which give you your credit report for cheap and in some cases, your score for free as well.

Before I get started though I should mention that although these sites may mention your score and report, they don’t represent your real number but a close approximation. Your real score is kept by the Fair Isaac Corporation, or FICO. These sites are just a great place to get a cheap credit report online.

www.annualcreditreport.com

Annual Credit Report is a great site to obtain your cheapest credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus, Experian, Transunion, and Equifax. However, if you would like to get your score you will have to pay for each of them.

The cost for getting your score will be around $8 each. By law, you are allowed to receive your free reports every 12 months but the score isn’t included. Also, if you want to view each report you will have to jump through a few extra hoops and sign up for each credit bureau.

www.quizzle.com

With Quizzle it’s altogether different. Unlike the last site, Quizzle only requires you to sign up one time and you are done. With Quizzle you get a lot more than just a report.

First, you get your credit report and score. However, the score is only based on one of the three reporting companies, Experian. In fact, Quizzle gave me a higher credit rating than of the other two.

Second, Quizzle also gives you their own rating. They base this score off of several things including your current mortgage, extra cash you have, your current credit score, and even the appraised value of your home. They base the score out of 100, so the higher your score the better you rank.

Finally, best thing about Quizzle is that it tracks more than just your credit score and report. It also tracks your home value, helps with your mortgage options, helps with budgeting, and also helps you set up an emergency fund or in Quizzle’s terms, a Rainy Day Fund.

As you can see there are many advantages to using Quizzle.

www.creditkarma.com

With Credit Karma again you have to sign up and create an account. Once inside you will get some great and useful tools.

First off, you will be able to see your cheap credit reports, and in this report I noticed my score was different than my Quizzle score but not too far off. In fact, Credit Karma will give you a snapshot of you score and show you even where you fit in as the national percentile, your local percentiles, age percentiles, and by your email address. For me I was in the top 75% percentile on the national average. Pretty cool.

Lastly, the thing I like best about Credit Karma is the Credit Score Simulator. Here you will be able to test ideas on your credit score such as if you were to buy a new car. How would that affect your score? Or if you would refinance your home, how would that affect your score?

You can test a ton of ideas here, everything from going through bankruptcy, to collections, to adding more credit to your credit cards, to closing a credit card, to allowing one account go overdue by 30, 60, or even 90 days.

When it comes to Credit Karma this is definitely one tool you’ll want to play around with.

Which Website Should You Use

In my opinion of all three of these sites I wouldn’t simply use one. I would use all three. This way you can get several different views of what others are saying about your credit situation. In fact all three sites showed me a different credit score.

What sites do you use to check your credit score and report? Leave a comment and tell us about it.

Chris

This post was recently featured on The Carnival Of Personal Finance by Earn What You Spend.

Cheap Credit Score: 6 Simple Steps To Getting Your Credit Report