Saturday, January 5, 2008

Scoring a Better Mortgage

How quickly time flies. January means its time to look up my free annual credit report. I try to remember to do it every January once all the holiday bills have been paid off.

Monitoring your credit, and improving your FICO gives us something do do while we wait out the downturn in housing (not to mention its just plain smart in this day and age of rampant identity theft).

In the end you will be glad you did, and so will your wallet. In case you don't have the link.....Free Annual Credit Report

I'm hoping to break 800 this year.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Truly great minds, think alike! Although I don't have a clue what my credit score is, I just ordered my annual reports last week.

Cmyst said...

You get a free report from each of the three rating services. Last year, I got all at once; this year, I'm spacing them out and getting one every 4 months.

AgentBubble said...

You should considering running it every 4 months, not once a year...You get a free report from each of the three credit reporting agencies each year...I run one from a different one every 4 months.

AgentBubble said...

cmyst--We posted the same message at the exact same time!

Anonymous said...

Does this free report actually give you scores? I see this crap all the time, free credit report.Isn't much use to me without a score.

Cmyst said...

GMTA! (to AB)

Yes, they give you your score.

Anonymous said...

the score is not free and will cost (generally around $8.00/bureau). The report is free. Only equifax gives you FICO scores and other two do not give you FICO scores so are not really that useful and imho not worth buying.

Anonymous said...

As a Costco member we use their Credit Report service that gives you your credit scores and daily monitoring with email notifications if anyone accesses your credit information. It costs $7.50/month per person for executive members, but you can get a new report every month if you wish. It monitors all three agencies; Equifax, Esperian and TransUnion. Yes it does cost, but we've had this for over a year and feel the cost is worth it. Especially with all the identity fraud issues around.

Anonymous said...

I think the annual free credit reports are only available for residents of some states (like California).

Anonymous said...

I use true credit and for 15 mo, I get my scores and history for all 3 plus monitoring. They have some other perks too. I hated having to pay just to get my info but it's sure paid off.

Buying Time said...

Good suggestions all....we should probably sign up for some sort of service. As my husband is a Costco junkie...I have a feeling that one will prevail =)

Anonymous said...

If you have any type of WaMu credit card you can get your transunion fico score for free and is updated each month.

You can get your credit report for free in all states now I believe. And if you have already used your free time and want it again just put a fraud alert on your file (which lasts 3 months) and then request your reports which will be free.

Cmyst said...

I have identity fraud insurance, but they don't give me a free report. I'm a big tightwad. Sorry to mislead on the "free" FICO, but I honestly forgot that I spent a few bucks to get it last year! I had to look back into my files to figure out what I'd done. I did have all three of the credit reports, but only Equifax had the FICO.