This is the first post in our new series "Reader Questions" where we'll start sharing real questions from readers . for the benefit of the whole community If you have questions for the team NextAdvisor you can submit them directly to us via our contact form
. Q: I am impressed with your opinions on the various credit reporting services, but also a little confused by all the choices. Maybe you can help me. my main concern is to check my FICO score on a regular basis ( eg monthly) - which service would be best for me
A: If your main objective is to monitor your FICO score so we believe MyFICO? is the best credit report service for you. However, if you want some additional benefits that people usually associate with credit report monitoring services, such as access on-demand credit report data and monitoring of the credit report, you can consider a service like total CreditCheck.
MyFICO provide you score two power free reports each year that include your FICO score up to date. They will also provide you an update FICO score every time there is a change in your credit file. This will ensure that you always know how changes in your credit report affect your FICO score.
There are some limitations to MyFICO in that they do not monitor your credit report Equifax. Since all three of your credit reports, including Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, may differ from each other, you will not necessarily have direct access to all information that could be an impact on how lenders see your creditworthiness. In addition, MyFICO gives you only two reports a year while other services allow you to access data at any time.
CreditCheck Total, for example, will give you access to all three credit reports and all three credit scores upon request. This does not include FICO scores but will still give you a good indication of how the credit you overall health is a trend. total CreditCheck also has the added benefit of helping to protect against identity theft by monitoring all three of your credit reports for changes.
The compromise with total CreditCheck is that you can not access the data FICO score you are more interested in receiving on a frequent basis. CreditCheck Total also holds a more expensive monthly fee of $ 19.95 compared to $ 7.50
The good news is that both MyFICO MyFICO and total CreditCheck offer a free trial of 30 and 7 days respectively . So you can try each and decide what is good for you.
You can also learn more by visiting our full comparison of credit report monitoring services.