I know that we can get free credit reports, but those come without a score. How can we get the current credit scores themselves? I’m not looking for monitoring or other services, as we froze our credit last year after the Anthem breach. Just scores.
Thanks.
CreditKarma and CreditSesame are two that I use. They’re free.
Some banks or credit unions will also give you your credit score for free. Capital One and some other credit cards also give you your score.
Keep in mind that there are different credit scoring models - the number you get from a credit card provided service or sites like those mentioned above may not be identical to what a mortgage lender obtains, for example. As a mortgage lender, we get 3 scores on our reports - Equifax, Experian and Trans Union - and the 3 will differ slightly.
So, it’s good to know a ballpark of your credit score, but it’s not one identical number in every situation.
I ditto creditkarma. Its pretty accurate.
AmEx gives you FICO score, which is what mortgage lender uses.
Creditkarma gives transunion and equifax (they used to only give equifax). Creditsesame gives transunion.
I’ve always found these two to be within a few points (if not identical) to the score provided to me when I’ve opened a credit line.
@rockvillemom We’re probably going to be buying a car in the near future. We know approximately what our scores should be, just want to do a check before we ask for a loan.
We’ll most likely be financing through our credit union, so I will call them tomorrow and ask if they can give us scores before we apply. If not, I’ll check creditkarma and credit sesame. I don’t expect any nasty surprises but these days, you never know.
Thanks everyone.
I’ve never received a credit score from a CC company, except the one time my application was denied. How do you get AmEx to give fico scores? I never have, tho have long had AmEx cards.
@HImom - just log into your account and on the right side of the screen under “Useful Links” is “View FICO score”. At least that is how I get it.
Thanks @ClaremontMom!! Will give it a try.
Cool, @ClaremontMom, I didn’t know that you could do that. All the times I’ve been to the Amex website, and I didn’t know it was there all the time. Interesting, though. I thought my score would have gone up a lot. Over nine months we’ve paid off over 200K in credit card debt, auto loans, and HELOC. We haven’t closed many accounts, and I’ve barely applied for any cards. But my credit score has gone down over that time, due to, " Ratio of balance to limit on bank revolving or other rev accts is too high, and “Too many inquiries last 12 months”.
Yet our balance is way down, our limit is about the same, and I’ve barely had any inquiries. I wonder if it had anything to do with a credit freeze I initiated, due to identity theft attempts. Maybe I should dispute the score, if one can do such a thing, though we don’t plan on applying for any loans.
BD- I would figure out where those credit inquiries are coming from. CreditKarma will tell you that (I can’t remember off the top of my head if other places show you.) But for what it’s worth, 5 hard inquires in the last year already puts you into the “poor” category for that factor. That’s not a very forgiving category.
Also I don’t know AmEx works but I got my FICO score through my credit union and when I just clicked on the FICO link it gave me the score/report of several months ago. I had to hit a button to “refresh” it but that wasn’t immediately apparentl.
Thanks, romani, I think I need to review that. I think there were several credit inquiries from the crooks applying to places, however, I thought that since I’d said they were fraudulent, that they wouldn’t have worked against me. Maybe I need to investigate further and contact the credit agencies. It’s not that low, it just seems like it should be higher. The Amex score was from June, I think, though who knows when they really got it!
Busdriver, definitely ask them if the fraudulent inquiries are affecting your score but they may not tell you. Their scoring formulas are proprietary, which sucks since they can have such an effect on us.
@busdriver11 - You should go to https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action and get your free credit reports. You can then see what inquiries have been made and decide if you want to proceed from there. I’m not sure how hard it would be to dispute. I did a very quick google search and it brought me to a page where it seems like it might not be worth it…only a few dings to your score,a pain to deal with…and score recovery pretty quick from it. If you are not applying for credit any time soon it may not be worth the hassle of trying to get them removed.
@busdriver11 - Should have added, if you have a credit freeze, you won’t be able to get your credit report instantly online. It will tell you what you need to do (fill out a form and send two pieces of ID).
Though, when I think about it, I would have assumed you got a credit report when you were dealing with the ID theft. But if not, you should now.
Note that there are different FICO scores for different purposes.
http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/fico-score-versions.aspx
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit/how-many-fico-credit-scores-do-you-have.aspx
“Though, when I think about it, I would have assumed you got a credit report when you were dealing with the ID theft. But if not, you should now”
Yes, I got all three when I was dealng with the fraud. Just one account was approved, but several inquiries. Bizarre how they could have done that, when they didn’t even have the exact SSN. Thought I’d flagged those inquiries as fraudulent, but maybe I didn’t, (or it didn’t matter to them).
I had trouble with both creditkarma (would not give information because our credit is frozen; you were right, @ClaremontMom) and creditsesame (for some reason it didn’t like my address and would go no further). So I went to freecreditreport, which I’ve done before, and for an extra dollar got my Experian score as well as the report. (Seven-day free trial which I’ll cancel tomorrow). I do kind of wonder why they were able to get my data and creditkarma wasn’t. Oh well. I have the info I wanted, and the score was just a tad higher than I’d thought it would be, but very close.
Here’s an additional tidbit about freecreditreport. I logged on this morning to cancel the trial membership (couldn’t figure out how to do that online, and had to call customer service). On the home page, I was asked if I wanted to see scores from all 3 bureaus. Of course, I said yes! I could have also gotten reports from Transunion and Equifax, but the scores were all within 8 points of each other which told me there was nothing amiss on any of them, so I didn’t bother. But now I know for sure that no matter which bureau the car dealership uses, I’m clean as a whistle. 