Finance Gourmet » credit score

Credit Bureau Phone Numbers

Finance Gourmet — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:05:35 +0000

Your credit score is a critical component of your financial well being. Your credit score is computed from the information in one of your credit reports. Those credit reports are maintained by the major credit bureaus. If there is an issue with your credit report, you’ll have to fight your way through the standard red tape of major corporations with the added complication that you aren’t really the credit bureau’s customer, so they really aren’t very interested in hearing from you in the first place. Finding a useful credit bureau phone number is, therefore, sometimes tricky.

Before Calling a Credit Bureau

Before you grab your phone and dial, consider whether or not calling the credit bureau will actually be useful to you. For example, if there is some incorrect information on your credit report, it may be better to dispute the wrong information in writing. Even if you call directly to the CEO, disputes still have to be made according to the credit bureau’s dispute procedure, so calling the wrong number is a waste of time.

Also, if you wish to enter your own customer statement into your credit report, that can be done electronically as well.

However, there may be times when you need to directly call the credit bureaus, in that case, try to find the right phone number for the function you are trying to achieve.

If you want to get your credit score, you may want to check into one of the free online credit score services such as Credit Karma, Quizzle or Credit Sesame.

Phone Numbers for Credit Bureaus

These phone numbers may change in the future.

Experian Phone Numbers

Order Credit Report: 1-888-397-3742
Dispute Information on Credit Report: Call specific number on your credit report
Report Fraud or Identity Theft: 1-888-397-3742
Credit Freeze: State Dependent

Transunion Phone Numbers

Free Credit Report if Denied Credit Call: 1-800-888-4213
Order Credit Report By Phone: 1-800-888-4213
Dispute Items on Credit Report: 1-800-916-8800
Place Fraud Alert on Credit Report: 1-800-680-7289
Place Security Freeze on Credit Report: 1-888-909-8872
Main Number: 1-800-916-8800

Equifax Phone Numbers

Report Fraud and Place Fraud Alert: 1-888-766-0008
Place Security Freeze on Credit Report: 1-800-349-9960
Credit Report Inquires: 1-800-685-111
Order Credit Report and Credit Score: 1-866-493-9788

All three credit bureaus have a unified system to allow customers to opt-out of marketing offers and junk mail based upon your credit report. In other words, you can tell the credit bureaus to stop selling your credit report information to credit card companies and lenders. The phone number to opt-out of marketing from all three credit reporting companies is: 1-888-567-8688 (1-888-5-OPT-OUT)

Don’t forget that you can also get one free credit report from each credit bureau every year at annualcreditreport.com

Credit Bureau Phone Numbers originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Credit Sesame Scam or Legit?

Finance Gourmet — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:45:24 +0000

Credit Sesame is another in a growing list of online services that allow you to view and monitor your credit score for free. We’ve already looked at some of these services. First, we checked to see if Credit Karma is a scam. Then, we looked at whether Quizzle is a scam. Credit Sesame looks like these other online service on the surface, but let’s dive in an look deeper.

Just like we noted when doing our Credit Karma review, the credit score you get from Credit Sesame is not a free FICO score. While the Credit Karma score comes from Tansunion, the Credit Sesame credit score comes from Experian.

Like the others, the company makes money thanks to advertising from financial companies, like credit card issuers and lenders, as well as getting commissions on referrals to products. In fact, the company says that one of the service they provide is to “Optimize Your Current Loans.” If you sign up for Credit Sesame, you’ll know doubt be informed that you could save hundreds of dollars by signing up for other cards or loans that, of course, you can click on a link in order to get started right away.

Credit Sesame vs Credit Karma

In addition to using different credit bureau’s credit reports to calculate your credit score, there are some differences in the features between Credit Sesame versus Credit Karma.

Credit Sesame offers a “What If” modeling tool that predicts what will happen to your finances based upon a different credit score. It’s a no brainer that a higher credit score yields lower interest rates, but this tool lets you see just how much you might save depending upon whether your credit score was a little higher, or a lot higher.

Credit Sesame Safe?

It is always difficult to decide whether to trust an online service like Credit Sesame with your confidential personal information. At some level, if you are going to use their service you have to trust them, just like you do when you give a bank or financial institution your credit information, social security number and the like. There is never any way to know 100 percent for sure if something is safe, but there is a reality check that typically can show you the way.

For example, Credit Sesame was founded in April of 2010, so it hardly qualifies as fly-by-night two years later. The company has also been profiled by several mainstream news publications, who, theoretically, would have noticed if the company was a bald-faced scam.

Second, the company has raised nearly $7.5 million in capital from some well known investors and venture capital firms. This isn’t a blank check for trust, but running an online scam generally doesn’t go hand in hand with raising several millions of dollars from investors. If you were trying to run off to Rio with a bunch of money, pocketing the millions you got from investors is probably faster and more lucrative than selling off the financial data of little old ladies.

Finally, the founder of the company has a real, verifiable track record as an entrepreneur who not only has founded financial companies in the past, but also sold them to very legitimate financial corporations.

In the end, Credit Sesame offers a useful service for most users.

Credit Sesame Scam or Legit? originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Quizzle Scam or Legit?

Finance Gourmet — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 05:45:56 +0000

I’ve gotten several request lately to review Quizzle. Quizzle is an online financial service that offers, according to the bold face type, a free credit report, free credit score and various financial tools.

Whenever someone points me in the direction of a personal finance company like this the first thing I check is if I can sniff out a scam. Often, you can spot the scam coming before you even see the fine print. Obviously, if something isn’t on the up and up, then there is no reason to waste any time on a review.

So, is Quizzle legitimate, or is this all a big con job?

Is Quizzle a Scam?

The biggest red flag for the various free credit score or free credit report offers floating around out there is to look for the words “free trial.” Typically, the way the free credit score scam works is that a financial company (including all three major credit bureaus) offer you a free report in big, bold type and in smaller type, lower down on the page, inform you that it isn’t actually free at all. Instead, you are being offered an automatically renewing trial membership in a credit monitoring program that costs $20, $30, or even $50 per month.

This kind of offering is all too common. There are some services that do follow through on the free offer. For example, I checked into whether Credit Karma was a scam and determined it wasn’t. My full Credit Karma review determined that the site offers a non-FICO score, but it is really free.

The way to see the trial offer trap coming, if you don’t see it before, is to watch out for the website to ask for your credit card information. There is no reason for a legitimate free credit offering to require your credit card information. Indeed, the reason you have to enter that information is so that they can automatically charge you the full monthly or annual fee for that trial service without asking when your free period runs up.

For example, Credit Check Total asks for your credit card number. To avoid suspicion, they actually offer free credit reports and scores for $1, so that’s why they need the number. Buried in the fine print, of course, is the information that they’ll use that same number to pay for your monthly subscription once your 7-day trial period is over.

Quizzle does not ask for a credit card number. So far, so good.

Who Owns Quizzle?

While the ownership of a company is never a precise indicator of a scam, there is some comfort in knowing who you are doing business with. In this case, it turns out that Quizzle is owned by Quicken, or more precisely is, “part of the Quicken Loans family of companies.”

That doesn’t mean Quizzle is legit, but it does mean that this isn’t two teenagers sitting in their bedroom concocting an online identity theft scheme.

How Quizzle Makes Money

Finally, in order for something to not be a scam, there has to be a legitimate business strategy for it to exist. In Credit Karma’s case, for example, the company relies on advertising and referral commissions to earn its keep.

Quizzle’s money making strategy appears two-f0ld. First, the company is a Quicken Loans company. That means it doesn’t necessarily have to make money on its own. It does act as a feeder for business to Quicken Loans. In fact, on the first sign up screen, there is just one question that isn’t just name, address, phone number type stuff, and it’s about whether you plan to buy a house. Guess what sister company is very interested when the answer to that question is yes.

Second, Quizzle offers several additional services that it does charge a fee for. These charges are never automatic and are all advertised clearly as being something you pay for. You can determine whether these Quizzle offerings are worth it or not for you.

As it turns out, Quizzle is not a scam. There is no hidden charge and the privacy policy only allows them to hand over your personal data to other Quicken companies, so that’s par for the course.

I looks like a full Quizzle review is in order. I’ll start looking into that.

Quizzle Scam or Legit? originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Credit Check Total Scam or Legit?

Finance Gourmet — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:17:14 +0000

After a review of Credit Kama here on FinanceGourmet, a reader asked if I would look into another service he had found called Credit Check Total at creditchecktotal.com.

Credit Check Total Review

With many financial services, the reality of the offering differs significantly from what the bold, large-type headline suggests. The Credit Check Total website leads with the bold headline that you can “see your whole credit picture” of all three credit reports and credit scores for just $1. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Further down the page, but to their credit, not buried in the fine print, is information you need to determine if this near free credit report offer is right for you, or if Credit Check Total is a scam. It says that when you order the $1 credit reports and scores, that you will automatically, and without the ability to opt-out begin a trial membership that costs $29.95 per month.

The real trick here is that you have just a 7-day trial period. If you don’t cancel during those 7 days, then those $1 credit reports actually cost you at least $30.95.

When I looked into whether or not Credit Karma was a scam, I was on lookout for whether or not they tried to get me to enter a credit card number or bank account information. After all, there is no reason to require a billing method if your service is actually free. However, a lot of so-called “free” offers are actually trial subscriptions to a credit monitoring service. It looks like Credit Check Total’s offer might have been designed to avoid that red flag. By charging a $1 for their reports, they offer a legitimate reason to need a method of payment (and to test that it works).

There is no reason to pay $30 per month for a credit monitoring service. There are plenty out there that will do it for much less.

If that weren’t enough, the credit score offered through the creditchecktotal.com website isn’t even a real FICO credit score. The fine print says that it is calculated using the Plus Score Model and is for educational purposes only. As I have mentioned before, having the exact FICO score isn’t necessary since you should really just focus on making sure that whatever score you are using doesn’t go down. However, for $360 per year, you should at least get a FICO credit score included.

I do not recommend signing up for this service, even if you intend to cancel before the trial period is up. There is just no added value beyond getting your regular free annual credit reports.

Cancel Credit Check Total

If you go against my advice to not sign up for CreditCheck Total, then you will need to cancel your service to avoid paying a very high monthly fee.

If you insist on signing up, check to see if your credit card offers a temporary number. Many cards allow you to generate a temporary number online. Set it to expire next month, and if possible, set a maximum limit of $5. You can use a one-use number or set the limit at just $1 because they charge tax, and they do a reversible authorization on your card of $1 in addition to the actual $1 fee, probably to detect one-time use numbers.

Cancelling Credit Check Total before the trial period is up is necessary to avoid being charged the full credit monitoring service fee. Technically, you have nine days after you sign up for your $1 credit reports because it takes 48 hours for your monitoring to actually start. This is nice. At least the clock isn’t ticking while you aren’t getting anything. However, remember, this is not the typical 30-day trial that you often see for these services. In fact, the window to cancel is so short, I recommend cancelling immediately after you get your three credit reports.

How To Cancel Credit Check Total

According to the Terms of Service posted on their website, you can cancel the recurring credit monitoring service by calling 1-866-506-7894 or by using the website. Don’t wait until 5:00 p.m. on the last day as there is some fuzzy language about time zones and periods in the TOS.

Credit Check Total Scam or Legit? originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Best Time to File Bankruptcy

Finance Gourmet — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:38:50 +0000

While there is never a good time to file bankruptcy, there are some things that make filing bankruptcy at a certain time more or less advantageous for the filer. Making sure you understand the various bankruptcy rules and timing a bankruptcy filing correctly can save you some time and money.

Good Time to File Bankruptcy

One of the things that trips many bankruptcy filers up, even after speaking with a bankruptcy attorney, is that the bankruptcy court will take 40 percent of your unpaid earnings. If you get paid once per month, this can be a very big deal. For example, if you get paid on the 30th of each month and you file your bankruptcy petition with the court on the 28th, you will have to pay almost half the amount of your pay check to the bankruptcy trustee. In a case like this, you would be much better off waiting the following month to file for bankruptcy.

However, there is a catch. You don’t want to file too soon after being paid because the other thing that the bankruptcy court is entitled to is almost all of the cash in your bank accounts on the day you file. For example, if you got paid $3,000 on the 30th and then you filed your bankruptcy petition on the 1st and there was $2,900 left in your bank account, you’ll have to pay that $2,900 to the trustee, even if you have long since spent it since you filed. Don’t forget, the numbers that matter are the ones that exist on the day you file.

Which brings us to the next issue in bankruptcy filing timing. Spend your money before you file. Be careful HOW you spend your money. Buying “things” like jewelry or other items is a very bad idea. The court can ask you to forfeit those items, especially if you bought them close to the filing date or if those items exceed the amount of allowable bankruptcy exemptions in your state. However, buying groceries, filling prescriptions and making sure your gas tank is full are very good ways to spend your money down before filing bankruptcy. No one can complain that you want to eat and stay healthy. More to the point, there is really no way to ask you to forfeit food, gas, and medicines.

Be very sure you understand that the amount in your account on the day you file is what matters, not when you spent the money. For example, if you write a check for $200 worth of groceries on the 8th, file bankruptcy on the 9th and the check clears on the 10th, the amount of money that counts against you for the purposes of asset counting in your bankruptcy is the amount in your checking account on the 9th, which includes the $250 you already spent. For this reason, it can be useful to withdraw cash. However, large cash withdrawals right before filing can be suspicious. Keep all your receipts to prove that you spent that money on necessities. You can also use your checking account debit card instead. Debit card transactions often clear in 24 hours, so you just have to wait one day. However, be careful of weekends and bank holidays when transactions may be delayed in reporting. You can also simply time your filing for a time after your checks and debit card transactions have cleared.

If you file anytime between December and April, don’t be surprised if your bankruptcy trustee keeps your case open long enough to take any tax refund you are getting. Don’t try spending your refund right before filing either, that usually won’t fly. Either adjust your withholding to avoid a refund (late in the year). If you still owe taxes from the previous year, this doesn’t apply to you. The IRS will intercept any refund before it ever goes to you and apply it to your outstanding taxes, before the court can lay any claim to it. This works in your favor since most federal income taxes cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

Pay Bills Before Bankruptcy

It doesn’t make sense to pay bills due on credit cards before filing. Those debts, including any late fees, will be wiped out in the discharge. As far as your credit score goes, bankruptcy is bankruptcy. Your credit report won’t look any better if you have slightly lower balances on your credit cards before you file. You might want to take a look at your credit score before you file. To avoid having to pay, get a free credit score from CreditKarma.com. (See my Credit Karma scam article and my CreditKarma.com review article for more details.) You may, however, want to wait to sign up for Credit Karma free credit monitoring. You’ll just get a lot of depressing emails as everyone reports your bankruptcy and charge offs.

While it is not smart to pay bills like credit card bills, it is very smart to pay utilities and other bills. Paying those bills takes money out of your accounts in a way that cannot be reclaimed by the bankruptcy courts. So, in our example above, the best time to file for bankruptcy is soon after you get paid, but not until you have paid your electric bill, cable bill, cell phone bills, kid’s tuition or day care fees, and so on. Each of those things will reduce the amount of cash you have to report without raising any white flags. In order to keep the amount of unpaid earnings you have to pay to the court low, pay those bills in advance so that you can file soon after you get your paycheck before more unpaid earnings build up.

Grab the FinanceGourmet Feed to keep up to date on our series of bankruptcy filing help articles as well as our other personal finance tips.

Best Time to File Bankruptcy originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Credit Karma Review Free Credit Monitoring

Finance Gourmet — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:27:06 +0000

Credit Karma made waves when it started offering free credit scores online. At first, many people, including me, were worried that the whole thing was just a big Credit Karma scam. However, after doing some research into whether Credit Karma is legit and even doing an in-depth CreditKarma.com review, I realized that while there may be some concerns over Credit Karma’s accuracy, there is nothing underhanded about the online financial service.

Credit Monitoring Scam

This year, Credit Karma is offering it’s registered users something new. They are expanding beyond their flagship service of offering to show users a free credit score and moving into to offering free credit report monitoring.

One of the biggest financial scams in America comes courtesy of the credit reporting industry and the three major credit reporting bureaus. In class Mafia-style extortion, a tough looking guy visits a local business. He says that bad things might happen to his business. In order to be safe, he should pay for “protection.” Of course, the only protection the business needs is from the crooks offering the protection. Credit reports and credit report monitoring work the same way.

The credit bureau’s extortion scheme works exactly the same way. You see, bad things might happen to your credit report. Someone might put false, damaging information in your file. The “smart” thing to do is to check your credit report often. To do that, you have to pay ~~your protection money~~ for a credit monitoring service so that you can be informed when negative information goes on your credit report. Of course, the only thing you need “protection” from is the credit bureaus and their lackadaisical efforts to ensure that only accurate information is on your credit report. Not surprisingly, Transunion, Experian and Equifax all gladly offer high-priced credit monitoring protection.

Unfortunately, just like the Mafia, the credit bureaus aren’t satisfied with just extorting a one-time fee. Instead, they use every trick in the book to get ~~suckers~~ customers to sign up for automatically renewing subscriptions that will charge your credit card or debit your bank account for life, all to “protect” you.

Free Credit Monitoring from CreditKarma.com

Credit Karma is offering it’s users a new option. Once signed up for Credit Karma, users can opt-in to a free credit report monitoring service. Every time negative information shows up on your credit report, Credit Karma will send an email alert. Unfortunately, at that point, the only thing you can do is order a copy of your credit report from the credit bureaus. If you are lucky, then you can get your government mandated free annual credit report.

If you already looked at in the past year, however, you will have to pay money in order to get your report, get bombarded with offers for free-trials that are actually auto-renewing subscriptions to expensive services, and then find the negative credit info in your report. Credit Karma has nothing to do with that part of the industry and it certainly isn’t their fault. Hopefully, the trend toward more accessible free credit information will continue. In the meantime, the credit industries high-paid lobbyists will ensure that other than that one free report each year, that you pay through the nose to keep financial companies from lying about you.

Fortunately, Credit Karma allows you the piece of mind of not having to pay every month, or every year, for a credit report monitoring subscription. By checking your free credit score number regularly and signing up for the CreditKarma.com free credit report alerts, you should be able to detect when something is going wrong. You’ll have to pay to find out exactly what and then to fix it, but at least you won’t be wasting money buying credit reports or paying fees when there are no issues with your credit.

Credit Karma Review Free Credit Monitoring originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Real Credit Score or Fake Credit Score

Finance Gourmet — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:50:41 +0000

After investigating is CreditKarma.com legit or not, we got a lot of questions about credit scores and credit reports. Hopefully, this can help clear up some of the most common credit score misconceptions.

Update: Now CreditKarma.com offers free credit report monitoring. Check out the Credit Karma review of free credit monitoring service.

Credit scores are confusing to many people. This is not the result of ignorance or being naive. Credit scores are not consumer products. They were (are) meant to be used by financial institutions. These lenders are the ones who pay for the credit scores. Banks and lenders are credit score customers, not the people who are being scored.

Credit scores are not a free, open system. Rather, they are a product, sold by Fair Issac. They charge money for each credit score calculated. Fair Issac’s customers are banks, mortgage companies, and other lenders, not you. In fact, a quick look around the Fair Issac website should show you that this is not a company concerned about selling products or services to individuals as customers.

Fair Issac has a separate website and separate company face called MyFico that deals with regular people instead of lending institutions. MyFico will gladly sell you your credit score, or charge your for credit monitoring. But, make no mistake, this is an additional revenue stream for the company, NOT its core business.

Credit Score Versus Credit Report

Making things even more confusing, credit scores are calculated from credit reports. Fair Issac does not have credit reports. They use credit reports from the three major credit reporting bureaus, Experian, Transunion, and Equifax.

Experian, Equifax, and Transunion do not make credit scores. More specifically, credit bureaus do not make FICO credit scores. They don’t like missing out on all the money generated from credit scores, so they made up their own credit score, but nobody uses it. Whenever someone is talking about your “real credit score” they mean a FICO score from Fair Issac, not one of the new credit scores from Transunion, Experian or Equifax.

Different Types of FICO Scores

If that weren’t confusing enough, there are more layers of confusion. There is not just one FICO score.

Fair Issac sells more than one kind of credit score. However, each credit score is called a FICO score. That means that even if you get your FICO score, you might not have your “real credit score” which is one of many different FICO scores available.

The different FICO scores rank different things in your credit report, different ways. What makes a person more or less likely to repay a car loan, for example, differs from what makes a person more or less likely to repay a mortgage home loan. Thus, different scores. A car dealer wants the FICO score for car loans, a mortgage company wants the FICO score for mortgages.

Even if your mortgage guy or your car finance guy shows you your actual credit score that they used for a loan, it will still be different from the one based on the other two credit reports and different from the other types of FICO scores.

In other words, there is no one “real” credit score.

How Do I Get My Real Credit Score For Free?

In a recent review of CreditKarma.com we showed you how to get your credit score for free. As far as I know, Credit Karma is the only way to get a free credit score online without having to sign up for a trial offer or buy something else.

The free credit scores from CreditKarma are real credit scores. However, you have to remember all of the information above.

Credit scores from CreditKarma.com are based on one of three possible credit reports. All three possible scores are “real scores”, but a lender might buy a credit score based on one of the other two credit reports.
Credit scores can change daily. If you get a score on Monday, and a bank reports a late payment on Tuesday, then the credit score you get on Wednesday will be different (lower). The credit score you got on Monday is your real credit score FOR MONDAY. Your credit score for any other day can be higher or lower.
There are different kinds of FICO scores. The one you get from Credit Karma is not one of them.

After looking into it to find out if Credit Karma is a scam I feel comfortable recommending it to readers as a good way to get a credit score for free without getting ripped off. There are ads on the website and they might send you emails, although I have only gotten monthly ones that say my credit score may have changed. Getting your credit score online from CreditKarma won’t make anything less confusing, but you can see if it’s moving up or down and do something if necessary.

Otherwise, there isn’t much you can do about trying to get an “exact” number. If you are close to a credit score number you need for a loan, you can improve your credit score but it takes time. Keep making all of your payments on time. If you have the resources, pay down some balances to lower your credit utilization ratio. Then wait. There isn’t much more you can do.

Real Credit Score or Fake Credit Score originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Credit Karma Review – Good Deal?

Finance Gourmet — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:58:26 +0000

Earlier we discussed how I first found out about Credit Karma and how, as a seasoned financial professional, I was inclined to think that Credit Karma is a scam offer for free credit scores. I decided to do a review after being asked about it repeatedly.

Update: Read here about an opt-in service Credit Karma review credit monitoring as a free additional service.

There are multiple reasons for thinking this service isn’t legitimate, but the main one is that credit scores are not free.

Credit scores are not free for you, they are not free for banks, they are not free for car dealers, they are not free for anyone. Credit scores are the “why didn’t I think of that” invention of the century where personal lending is concerned.

A company called Fair Isaacs takes information from the credit reports at any of the three major credit bureaus and then uses a proprietary algorithm to reduce dozens of pages or more into one single number called a credit score. It does not do this for free. Every time someone pulls your credit score, they pay. They may pay a lot or they may pay a little depending upon their agreement with Fair Issac, but they do pay. You can’t give something that costs you money for free unless you have another way to make more money than you are paying out.

Credit Karma Review of Free Credit Score

Since most free credit score scams are actually free trial offers that lead to an automatic recurring charge on your credit card, I figured that Credit Karma would want a credit card number before giving me my credit score. I know how to beat automatic charges on my credit cards, so I thought I would go through the process anyway and find out for sure whether or not Credit Karma was a scam.

The surprising thing was that they never asked me to enter a credit card number!

As you may recall, I had generated a limited use credit card number to enter, but I didn’t need it. Credit Karma asked for a lot of personal information, but never asked me to enter a credit card number nor any bank account information. In other words, they have no way to charge me for my credit score. It’s tough to scam someone when you don’t get any money from them.

That begs the question, is the credit score from Credit-Karma a real credit score?

Another credit score offering out there are calculators that “estimate” your credit score for you. The catch is that they estimate your credit score based upon the information that you provide. Chances are that there is no way you are going to enter all of the information that exists in your credit report, so it is not a very accurate estimate, no matter how good the credit score calculator program itself is.

That didn’t happen with CreditKarma.com either. Instead of asking me for my financial account information, they asked me for the same type of personal information anyone would need to pull a credit report and get a credit score on me. This does include your social security number and there is no way around that, so at a certain level, you have to trust that the Credit Karma website is legit. So far, I haven’t heard of any rumblings that this is all a very elaborate identity theft scam, although that is no guarantee of anything.

Credit Karma Complaints

The number one CreditKarma complaint is that the credit score is not a real FICO score. However, it is based upon your actual credit report data.

As it turns out, I was buying my car off of its expiring lease when I discovered Credit Karma, so I was able to compare the score CreditKarma.com said I had with the one my auto broker pulled in order to do my car loan paper work. The scores were close enough to be considered identical. (Scores actually very depending upon which credit bureau is used and even from day to day depending upon new information being reporting and aging of old information, but in this case they were within 4 points of each other.)

Now what would make Credit Karma the must have personal finance service for financially savvy people is that it does not just offer you your credit score for free once, but says that you can come back and update it as often as you like. I don’t know if there is a limit on how many times you can update, but I updated my free credit score from Credit Karma every month since May with no complaints.

In other words, I have gotten six free credit scores from CreditKarma.com without paying a cent, without buying anything, and without clicking on any advertisements. There are advertisements on the page, but unless they are the kind that pay just for showing up, they have earned nothing from me other than thanks and this review.

I recently setup an account for my wife (spouses can have very different credit scores even if “everything” is held jointly) and have started getting her free credit score as well.

I can’t say that I expect Credit Karma to be in business long. I doubt that it can earn enough money on what it is doing to make a profit. It might even get shut down by Fair Issac somehow since they don’t want people thinking of its flagship product as “free”. If Credit Karma does succeed, then it won’t be long before copycats are all over the Internet. But, no matter how it turns out down the road, for now, Credit Karma is a great deal for people managing their money.

Credit Karma Review – Good Deal? originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Capital One World MasterCard No Hassle Rewards Miles

Finance Gourmet — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:44:00 +0000

Existing Capital One MasterCard holders may or may not be getting the same deals, but new credit card offers from Capital One are arriving in the mail to new credit card users. These are not reserved for highly qualified borrowers with high credit scores either.

How do I know?

One good piece of financial advice that I frequently give is to use phony names when signing up for certain things, especially promotional offers and magazine subscriptions. The reason is that these companies like to turn around and sell your name and address to other companies that then send you plenty of junk mail. These mailing lists can be more profitable than the actual business of writing a magazine or newsletter!

Nothing helps sort out a real “Urgent! Response Required,” mailing from a phony one like seeing one of the fake names that you used to sign up for something in the past. Just like the one that appears on my no annual fee Capital One No Hassle Rewards World MasterCard offer that came to my house under a name used for magazine subscriptions. Since that isn’t even a real person, let alone someone with a high credit score, we know that these offers are either going out blind, or people with low credit scores can qualify for these credit cards.

Capital One Miles Rewards

This particularly Capital One MasterCard looks like it comes with the standard NoHassle miles reward chart and earning points follows the basic Capital One miles rewards earning plan. You get 1 mile for each $1 you spend. The miles do not expire and there is no limit to the number of miles you can earn with the credit card.

A bonus rewards points offer comes in the form of 30,000 bonus rewards miles comes with plenty of fine print. You actually get a 10,000 mile bonus reward with your first purchase. Then, if you spend at least $3,000 per year on the card, you get another 10,000 NoHassle miles reward bonus on your first anniversary and then 10,000 more No Hassle bonus miles on the second anniversary. So it might be a while before you want to use that Capital One Rewards Catalog to pick your free reward.

Also, there is no annual fee and this is a credit card with 0% interest rate APR on purchases until February 2011. After that, the regular interest rate is 17.99%, but that is not a fixed interest rate. Instead, this MasterCard from Capital One comes with a variable APR. The variable interest rate is calculated as PRIME + 14.74%. OUCH!

Folks, pay attention to these rates from banks on your credit card offers. 17.99% is not a low interest rate by any stretch of the imagination, but when the PRIME rate climbs to a measly 5%, which is still very low, by the way, this card will have an interest rate of 19.74%. That’s 20% interest on a credit card. No amount of miles is worth that.

Capital One World MasterCard No Hassle Rewards Miles originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Is myFICO Worth It?

Finance Gourmet — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:09:35 +0000

Every so often I get an email from somewhere offering me a trial membership to myFICO or something like it. And, every so often, I have to get a client to cancel the subscription. myFICO and the others are NOT worth it.

$90 per year

The myFICO service that allows you to check your credit score daily costs approximately $90 per year. Just do some quick math. I see people transfer their money all over the place to pick up an extra 0.5% on their savings or money market account. Instead of transferring your money and setting up direct deposit and whatever other gymnastics are required, you might want to consider how you could end up with the same net worth. That $90 per year adds up to the same amount as the total extra interest you would earn in an entire year on $18,000 in savings by getting a interest rate that is 0.5% better.

Easy Way to Get A Free Credit Score

Update (January 2012): You should see about this CreditKarma.com free credit monitoring review along with your free credit score. See my CreditKarma.com review for a complete look of Credit Karma. Also check this if you are worried about the whole thing being just a Credit Karma scam.

First, see if your financial institution will tell you your credit score for free. Some forward thinking customer focused banks and credit unions are actively reporting their customer’s FICO score on statements or on your online banking. Typically, these scores are updated quarterly. Even if your bank doesn’t print your score out somewhere, that doesn’t mean that they won’t tell you if you ask. Call the regular customer service number and ask if they have a recent credit score for you on file. Chances are they do. Many financial institutions update your credit score on a quarterly or semi-annual basis so that they can target you with the right kinds of services. After all, a customer with a 780 credit score is someone you don’t have to worry about bouncing a lot of checks or or over-running a credit-line. When you talk to them, get your score and the date it was from. There you go, free credit score.

If your bank won’t tell you your credit score, frankly, I’d start looking for another bank. Even saying the words, “Oh, well, that’s unfortunate because a friend of mine can always ask his bank. Maybe I should switch,” might get you bumped up to a different level of service, and your file noted so that you can get your score next quarter.

How to Manage Your Credit Score

Knowing your credit score number is not as important as what you are doing to it. Think about it this way, if a highly calibrated NASA scale says you weigh 197 lbs. does it really matter that your home scale says 194 lbs? What matters is whether the number is going up or down. While it is true that the exact number may determine your lending rate, you don’t know what those numbers will be. Some lenders will give you the best rate with a 715, others may require a 730. So, while it helps to know about what your credit score is, don’t obsess over the exact number.

So, how do you make sure your credit score keeps going up? Pay every bill, every month, on time. That’s it!

The only other time you even have to worry about it, is when you get different credit than you already have. That is, if you get a new credit card or refinance your house, or trade in your car for another. Then, it’s time to call the bank again and find out what your score it. You’ll need to wait a month or two before the change takes affect, but it doesn’t hurt to call right away. Then, you can ask if they know when it will be updated by their system again.

There you go. Absolutely FREE CREDIT SCORE management, no strings attached.

Is myFICO Worth It? originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com