With a higher FICO score, you can prepare yourself for better interest rates and favorable loans. myFICO.com is a one stop shop for receiving your FICO credit score and report. For those who want to know a bit more about myFICO products, here are some details on them:
1. FICO Standard
With FICO Standard, you can view your current credit report and score before you apply for that next mortgage or car loan. myFICO offers FICO credit scores and reports from either Equifax or TransUnion, two of the three major credit bureaus. The third credit agency, Experian, unfortunately does not offer FICO scores to consumers any longer (this article on the Experian Credit Score and Report discusses this matter).
Once you place an order, your credit information will be made available to you online and may be printed out as well. Your credit report will display information such as your address, employer, and financial accounts (credit cards, loans, mortgages, or other lines of credit), your payment history, items such as bankruptcies or other matters of public record, and more. Your credit score and report will be available for 30 days from the purchase date.
Seeing your FICO score and credit report together can be beneficial; if you know ahead of time which bureau your prospective lender prefers, you’ll be able to take action to improve your credit score, if needed.
Another benefit you’ll receive is the FICO Score Simulator. Let’s say you’re gearing up to pay off a credit card or student loan. With the simulator, you’ll be able to see how your FICO score may fluctuate due to the changes.
2. Suze Orman’s FICO Kit
Suze Orman has always been straightforward about dispensing financial advice and now, she’s bundled some helpful financial tools and resources into a myFICO product offering: the Suze Orman’s FICO Kit Platinum.
You can expect the kit to help you pull your FICO scores and credit reports once you answer a series of questions. Then the Action Planner can help you establish financial goals related to your scores and reports.
Other benefits of the kit include a debt eliminator, email bill reminders, an online vault to store important information, coaching for home and car loans, the FICO Score Simulator, and an analysis to help you locate and correct possible errors on your credit reports.
The kit is available online and works with a PC or a Mac, so don’t worry about having to futz with a CD or DVD-ROM coming through the mail. Your kit’s active for one year after purchase, so be sure to scope out all of its benefits.
3. myFICO Score Watch
Credit report monitoring can be a useful service if your goal is to receive identity theft protection, or if you need to watch your credit because you want to see how changes affect your credit over time. Thanks to myFICO Score Watch, you can monitor your credit with confidence.
With this service, you can check out your FICO score weekly and your Equifax credit report daily. It can tell you when you qualify for a better interest rate or when you hit a target credit score. The service will alert you via email or text message if your score begins to drop or changes are made to your credit report; this way, you’re likely to become aware if an instance of identity theft has occurred. Also, you’ll receive two Equifax Score Power reports each year.
4. FICO Quarterly Monitoring
If you prefer your credit information to come from TransUnion, then FICO Quarterly Monitoring might appeal to you more. With this service, you’ll receive your TransUnion credit report and FICO score on a quarterly basis; this way, you can track and compare changes to your credit history over time.
The service also includes identity theft insurance coverage of up to $25,000, a toll-free hotline to help you fight ID theft problems, and resolution tools to help you in case you become an identity theft victim.
Any of these four products can help you gain a better perspective on your credit score and report. For more on their benefits and features, you can check out the myFICO site; there are tons of helpful financial resources there for your perusal.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Always good to keep track of your credit score.
However, you do not need to pay. You can get a report from each of the 3 credit agencies for free. If you get one from each at 3 points in the year, that is plenty. Then you can do it all again next year.
Thanks for the comment! 🙂
With regards to credit score and report tracking, I think it depends on what you are looking for: do you only want to see your credit report or do you care about seeing your credit score as well? (Scores are calculated based on the information found in your credit report; the material in your report is distilled into one convenient number).
If you care about your credit score, and particularly, your FICO credit score (not those other variants), then as far as I know, you can’t get one unless you pay for it. Why people get a FICO credit score when there are other free alternatives out there — I’m guessing it’s inertia, but it’s also reported to be the most widely used score around (by lenders and other entities).
You can get free credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com as you mentioned — but you would only be able to see your credit reports in this case. Some people want to see their FICO scores, but you’ll have to pay for them, and IMO, myFICO is one of the cheapest places to pick them up (other places will sell you other services so you can get your score).
You can also get proprietary non-FICO credit scores through other sources such as the specific credit bureaus (TransUnion and Experian). You can even get some other form of your credit score through Credit Karma and Quizzle, but these are NOT FICO scores.
If you are looking specifically for your FICO credit score, then myFICO.com (or Equifax) would be the place to look. Or you can bug your lender if they’ll show it to you 😉 .
I do think this stuff can be confusing, so please feel free to correct me if need be.