How Can I Check My Credit Score Without Affecting It?
Introduction Credit scores are a tool that creditors, lenders, and others use to assess your creditworthiness. It provides them with an understanding of how consistent you have been with the payment of debts and how consistent you are likely to be in the future.
Of course, you cannot simply sit idly while your credit score is low or unjustifiably high, and it is necessary to monitor it. However, every time your credit report is requested any form of ‘inquiry’ can be made. Remember, the number of inquiries made about your credit report within a short time can lower your score slightly.
Well, then how does anyone go about monitoring their credit score often without racking up inquiries that hurt it? Here are several options.
Use AnnualCreditReport.com Through the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) you can obtain your credit report from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion once a year and it will not cost you anything. The official website to access these free reports is AnnualCreditReport. com, which the three bureaus have developed to enable consumers to order these reports online in one click.
The credit reports you are provided with through AnnualCreditReport.com are the actual reports that your lenders rely on when deciding on your creditworthiness. Although they do not display your actual numeric credit score, you can be able to get an overall view of your credit health by going through the reports to check for inaccuracies, missed payments, collection accounts in your credit reports, and other negative factors that have pulled down your credit score. In case of any form of malpractice, quick reporting and completion of the same is likely to have positive impacts on the score.
Use Credit Monitoring Services You can also enroll in a credit monitoring service to get the chance to monitor your credit reports without having to have numerous hard inquiries. Almost all these services provide you with your latest credit reports and scores for a monthly or yearly subscription fee.
The credit reports you acquire through monitoring services also will not be included as hard inquiries. That is because they do not pull your credit report directly but rather use ‘soft’ credit checks to obtain the details. In its turn, a soft inquiry does not impact your scores in any way and can only be seen by you.
Credit Karma, IdentityForce, and PrivacyGuard are some of the most popular credit monitoring services out there. Some banks and credit card issuers also provide credit monitoring services free of cost to their account holders.
Try Score Estimation Tools In addition to the free credit reports, Credit Karma offers an estimated VantageScore, which is a form of credit score similar to FICO and is updated weekly. It is a figure computed from the details contained in your TransUnion and Equifax credit reports. Nonetheless, the estimated scores are usually slightly off true FICO scores depending on the specific credit bureau used.
Other websites such as NerdWallet and WalletHub also provide free credit score simulations. These raise questions about our credit histories and provide you with approximations of your scores. These can only be used to monitor the overall trend in your credit scores but they most probably will not contain your actual scores.
Lean on Educational Scores The three credit reporting bureaus also provide credit scores for consumers who wish to monitor credit scores often but in a way that does not affect the scores. For instance, Experian allows consumers to view their FICO score via the Experian CreditMatchTM tool while this does not imply that one is subjected to a hard inquiry on the reports. Equifax also offers a monthly Equifax Credit Score for the same purpose.
Like the standard FICO and VantageScore, these educational scores operate on the same scoring system. However, educational scores are not visible to lenders when they pull your reports hence, requesting them does not amount to full-fledged credit checks. They are generally very similar to what a lender would see at the same point in time.
Applying for a Credit Card or Loan Every time you apply for a new credit including, a mortgage, car loan, credit card, or any other credit product the credit reporting agency will be run to check on your application. This leads to a hard inquiry being placed on your file. This type of inquiry does not have a significant impact on your scores; however, it will pull the scores down if many inquiries are made in a short period.
But getting a new credit is also a good way to get your latest score from one or more credit bureaus, which could be useful before applying for a large loan. This score assists in determining what sort of interest rate and terms one is likely to be offered. If the score is below what you expected, then you can avoid applying for more credit until you can build the score further.
Thus, which score-checking methods are Best? Monitoring your credit score is important, and the frequency of the check is more or less dependent on the individual. The only authorized website offering free credit reports and simple credit history information without harming your score is AnnualCreditReport. com. Credit monitoring services provide easy accessibility to your reports and scores, though they are updated frequently. Educational scores enable you to track your approximate score range without generating hard inquiries. The difficult credit checks provide you with a precise glimpse of your score at the time of applying for other credit.
Perhaps, incorporate a couple of those to find a good middle-ground of monitoring your credit and not causing too much harm to your credit scores. As such, you can monitor your credit scores as frequently as possible with the right combination that will not harm your scores.
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