How To Get My Credit Score

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You might have seen those ads on TV: "Get your credit score FREE!" Most of these ads are, if not completely deceptive, at least a little bit underhanded in how they present this information. That's because although you do get your credit score and credit report "free," you also have to pay for a monthly service that monitors the credit report.

This is certainly something you may want to do if, for example, you are in a situation where your personal information may be at risk such that you could be a victim of identity theft. For most of us, though, that risk is relatively low, assuming that we follow certain safety practices like shredding documents with personal information on them before recycling them.

The government does provide access to three free credit reports a year, one from each major credit bureau. These three major bureaus are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. To get a copy of your free credit report from each of these bureaus, you can go to annualcreditreport.com.

Getting your credit score
These three reports do not give you access to your credit SCORE, just the credit reports themselves. However, it's going to be helpful to know what your score is when you apply for new credit, apply for a job, rent an apartment or get a mortgage. To do that, you can do one of two things.

You can buy your credit report from one of the three major bureaus (many experts say that TransUnion is the most accessed); when you buy your credit report, your credit score should be included.

Alternatively, you can go to the web site myfico.com and just buy your credit score. Again, you choose the bureau you buy the score from, and you can either opt to buy a single report or sign up for free trial, at which time you're charged based upon the plan you choose to continue to have access.

What's the best way to get my credit score?
Even though annualcreditreport.com doesn't include your credit score, it does include a complete copy of your report from all three bureaus; this should be good enough for an annual credit report "pull," where you simply pull your file and then look over your report to make sure there are no errors or fraudulent charges on it that you should be made aware of.

To get a copy of your FICO score itself, you may want to consider buying a complete credit report once a year as well, six months after you pull your free credit report offered to you by the government. This does two things. Number one, it gives you access to your credit score once a year, so that you can check and make sure it's what it should be (and take steps to correct it if it's not), and it lets you check your complete report twice a year (once every six months), so that you can keep track of things and make sure there are no unwarranted charges on your report, that any debts you are currently paying off our showing up paid, and that information older than about two years old (except for bankruptcy, which stays on for seven years) has "aged off" the report so that it no longer appears there.

You should also know that in the event you apply for credit, such as a credit card, a loan, a mortgage, and so on, you can also request a free copy of your credit report in the event you are turned down. This is also useful information in the event you get turned down for credit, so that you can see why this has happened and take steps to correct it.