Cheap Credit Report: 3 Websites You Can Get Free Credit Reports And Scores
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.
Hi Chris! Thanks for the nice review of Quizzle – we appreciate it and we’re gald you like it! Just so you know, Quizzle will give you a free credit report/score every 6 months.
If you ever have any questions about Quizzle, feel free to contact me: [email protected]. You can also follow the Quizzle team on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/Quizzle
Hi Kelly thanks for letting me know. I have only just recently heard of Quizzle through a talk radio show called, ‘Clark Howard’. So I went and checked it out.
Thanks,
Chris