Free Credit Score
Credit scores are looked at whenever you apply for any type of credit, they are not only used to determine whether you should be approved or denied but they are also used to determine what rate of interest you should be offered. Your score has a range between 300 and 850, the higher your score the better.
Index:
Free Credit Score Government
How To Get A Free Credit Score?
Top Sites To Get Your Free Credit Score Online
Why Do You Need To Check Your Credit Score?
Free Credit Score Government
It’s a common misconception that you can get a free credit score through the gov, the reason this rumour or misconception exists is because of the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) which states that each of the credit bureaus must provide individuals with one free copy of their credit REPORT every twelve months. These credit reports contain all of the credit information that has been collected on each individual, but they do not contain a credit score. This is because while the bureaus are required to give you your credit report, this report does not have to contain your credit score. You can read more about the FCRA and how it affects you at the FTC government website by clicking here - or you can read our guide to getting a free credit report.
How To Get Free Credit Score
Even though it’s not required by law to offer a free credit score, there are a number of companies out there that do offer this information for free. There are some strings attached of course – in the majority of cases you need to sign up to a subscription service commonly referred to as a credit monitoring program. By signing up for a free trial you get access to your credit reports, along with your credit scores – these monitoring programs also offer information such as how to improve your score and how big financial decisions such as applying for a mortgage will affect your score.
As long as you cancel within the trial period, you will not be charged anything. If you forget to cancel you can be charged anywhere from $14.95 to $29.95 per month. Below we’ve listed the top three sites to get your free credit score online.
Top Sites To Get Your Free Credit Score Online
1. Profinity.com
This is by far the best site out there to get your score from, they offer a 7 day free trial to their credit monitoring program. When you sign up they give you your credit score from each of the three bureaus (whereas other sites only give you access to the score from one of the bureaus). They also make it extremely easy to cancel your account – which you can do at any time by calling them on 1-866-982-9708. If you do not cancel your account within the trial period, you will be billed $29.95 per month.
Get your free score from profinity now!
A close second is the creditreport.com, they are not strictly free – in fact they charge you $1 to access all three of your credit scores along with all of your credit reports. This money is donated to Donors Choose though (a very worthy charity that helps struggling teachers provide the resources they need). This $1 signs you up to their credit monitoring program for 7 days, if you don’t cancel within that time you are billed $19.95 per month until you do cancel.
Cancelling is fairly straight forward, although slightly harder than free score 360.
Get your score from creditreport.com
3. Free Credit Score . Com
The only reason this site comes in at third place rather than first is that they are actually an Experian company and as such only offer you a free Experian score – rather than a score from all three of the bureaus. When you sign up to their triple advantage credit monitoring program you get this Experian score along with access to; credit score alerts (notifies you when your credit score changes and why), credit score center (aims to help you understand how credit scores work) & credit score estimator (tells you how future decisions such as paying off all your credit card debt will affect your credit score). Their free trial period is for 7 days and if you decide to keep their service you will be charged $14.95 per month. You can cancel at any stage by calling their customer support on: 1-877-300-2507.
Get your free score from freescore 360 now!
Why Do You Need To Check Your Credit Score?
Finding out your credit score is important for a number of reasons, for example if you have a score of below of 620 then it’s unlikely you will be approved for a FHA insured loan. If your score is below 720 or 760 you will not be offered the best rate of interest – by knowing your score you can save yourself the hassle of apply for loans that you’re not eligible for. This not only saves time and money, it also saves from dropping your score further. Whenever you apply for loan your credit score drops by between 5 and 50 points, so you really only want to be applying for loans that a). you really need and b). you’ll get accepted for.
We’ve talked a lot about being offered different rates of interested based on your credit score, but how big is the difference really? Below is a chart that lists credit score ranges, along with their respective interest rates.
| Credit Score | Grade | Typical Mortgage Rates* |
|---|---|---|
| 720-850 | Excellent | A |
| 700-719 | Very Good | A + 0.13% |
| 675-699 | Good | A + 0.65% |
| 620-674 | Fair | A + 1.80% |
| 560-619 | Bad | A + 4.30% |
| 500-619 | Very Bad | A + 5% |
To make better sense out of something like this it’s important to look at how much extra interest you’ll pay over the life of a mortgage. In this example we assume an APR (annual percentage rate) of %, a mortgage term of 30 years and a borrow of $350,000
| Credit Score | Interest Rate | Monthly Repayment | Extra Monthly Interest Paid | Total Extra Interest Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 720-850 | 3.720% | $,1614.95 | - | - |
| 700-719 | 3.85% | $1,640.83 | $25.88 per month | $9316.8 |
| 675-699 | 4.37% | $1,746.47 | $131.52 per month | $47,347.2 |
| 620-674 | 5.52% | $1,991.66 | $376.72 per month | $135,619.2 |
| 560-619 | 8.02% | $2,573.06 | $958.11 per month | $344,919.6 |
| 500-619 | 8.720% | $2,745.96 | $1,131.01 per month | $407,163.6 |
As you can see small differences in the interest rate can quickly add up, even a difference of only 0.13% can end up being close to $10,000 in extra interest paid – money that would’ve been better spent making improvements to your home or going on a family vacation.
If you do not have a score in the 720+ range, don’t fret. Go and visit the credit repair section of our website and learn how you can improve your score.