I’m always on the lookout for free credit scores! Since it’s Free Money [1] Friday, I thought it was the perfect time to highlight another one. Lazy [2] recently told me about Credit Karma [3], which offers you free access to your credit score daily.
How to Get Your Free Credit Score
- Enroll at Credit Karma [3].
- Verify your email address and personal information to obtain your score.
Really, that’s it! It took me less than two minutes to sign up!
Additional Credit Information
Once you get your score, you can utilize additional fun features:
- Credit Compare: View what percentile your credit score falls in for all Credit Karma users, your state, and your age bracket.
- Credit Simulator: Predict your future score by changing some of your information. For example, what will closing some cards do? Obtaining a new loan? Inquiries?
- Credit Snapshot: Find out your adverse action factors. These are the reasons your score is what it is, and you commonly see them listed on adverse action notices from financial institutions.
Credit Karma Credit Score
There are thousands of credit scores available, so this one isn’t going to match the one your insurance company uses, or the ones your bank uses, since it’s not a FICO score [4]. But chances are, it will be close enough to give you an idea of your credit worthiness. The Credit Karma score is based on a scale of 300 to 850.
I didn’t have my FICO score handy when I enrolled at Credit Karma, so I’d be interested to hear some data points for those of you who check your Credit Karma score, and FICO score [4] on the same day!
Credit Karma Details
Underlying Credit Report. Credit Karma uses the TransUnion credit report to calculate the score.
Credit Karma Blog. Credit Karma also operates a company blog [5].
Credit Reports
Credit Karma doesn’t give you access to your credit report. If you want to get your credit report along with your credit score, you can check out the following options:
Free Credit Monitoring from Credit Karma
2011 Update:
Credit Karma [3] just rolled out a free credit monitoring service. It’s currently in beta testing, so you need an invite to get access to the service.
I asked Credit Karma if they’d be willing to give out some invites to the readers at My Dollar Plan, and they gave us 100 invites. (Thanks Credit Karma!)
So you’ll have to act fast, before they’re gone!
How to Get Free Credit Karma Monitoring
- Enroll using one of the invites for My Dollar Plan readers at: Credit Karma Monitoring [7].
- If you already have a Credit Karma account, just select the option that you already have an account, and the service will be added.
- Once you are enrolled, you’ll see “Email me about credit alerts on my credit report.” in your contact preferences, which confirms your enrollment.
Credit Karma Monitoring
- Credit Karma will monitor your credit report nightly; you’ll get an email if anything changes.
- It’s free and you don’t have to give your credit card to sign up, since it’s not a trial (like many of the other monitoring services).
- The credit monitoring alerts will also show up on the notifications list in your Credit Karma account.
More on Credit Karma
Credit Score. We previously covered the Free Credit Score from Credit Karma [8] which features a detailed report card and a credit score simulator. The credit score is based on your credit report from Transunion, but is not a FICO score.
Credit Alerts. I just signed up yesterday, so I haven’t received any email alerts yet. Although, I’m planning to apply for some of the new [9] $500 [10] offers [11] later today, so I’m hoping I’ll get an email update with those inquiries soon.
Limited Beta Invites. The sign up link at Credit Karma Monitoring [7] will monitor how many invites are left.