Updated with new information.

Knowing not only what comprises your credit report, but also what goes into calculating your credit scores, and knowing your numbers is what everyone should have a basic fundamental knowledge. My parents taught me at a young age about how important credit can be and impact your financial relationships for the rest of your life.

So what I take for granted, I am often quite shocked at how little the general public knows about their credit. If you tell anyone that you open multiple credit cards at one time just for the sake of earning tons of rewards, the questions start pouring in about whether your credit is hurt as a result. The answer is in the short term, yes you will take a couple point hit per card; however, over the long run, you will have added additional credit to your portfolio, and when managed properly, will increase your credit scores.

I get asked all the time about what credit card should I open? The answer is quite unique to each persons particular scenario. Before I even make any recommendations, I always feel it is my obligation to make people obtain their credit report at a minimum, as well as their scores.

I have also been amazed by all of the resources out there that give you credit reports and/or credit scores. The great thing is they are free, and secondly, obtaining your report and/or scores does not impact your credit.

Options to Obtain Your Free Credit Report/Score

To begin with, the United States government requires that everyone is allowed to obtain their credit report one time per rolling 12 month period from each of the credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion). Visit AnnualCreditReport.com, which is the official site with no hidden costs.

Personally, rather than obtain all three credit reports at the same time, I prefer to space them out throughout the year. If you were to get all three on say, October 1, you would need to wait till October 2 of the next year to obtain them again. Therefore, I like getting one from each bureau once every four months. This allows us to monitor our credit throughout the year.

Note, you only obtain your credit report via the Annual Credit Report website. If you want your score, you have to buy them separately from each bureau. However, you have other free options.

Tip: If you are ever denied for credit, you are also able to obtain a free copy of your credit reports, which is in addition to those obtained from Annual Credit Report.

Credit Karma– Offers a free credit score every 7 days, based on your TransUnion credit report. You do not get to see your actual credit report for free, only your score. Credit Karma purchases the scores directly from TransUnion and gives them to you unmodified.

I evaluated how the Credit Karma scoring model varies with my score directly from TransUnion, and as the founder pointed out in the comments, there is no one single score. What this means is that even if you go to TransUnion to obtain your credit score directly, a lender may obtain a totally different score when they pull your credit.

The methodology to calculating your score varies depending on what type of credit you are trying to obtain.

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Credit Sesame: Obtain your free credit score based on your Experian credit report. Note, you are only able to obtain your free score once per month. For most people, this should be often enough.

Purchasing your credit report comes with an additional fee.

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Quizzle, which is part of the Quicken’s Loan company, appears to be different than both the aforementioned sites. Quizzle will allow you two copies of your credit report each year (every six months) for free. Any additional requests will incur a $9 fee, which still is cheaper than purchasing them directly from the credit bureaus. The site will also give you access to your Quizzle score (again every six months), which is similar to the Experian calculation.

Thanks to a readers tip in the comments for this resource.

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Thanks to another readers tip, guests can use credit.com to access their credit score once every 30 days. The credit report information included in your Credit.com account comes directly from Experian.

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Credit Card Options

There are also credit cards that offer free credit report/credit score monitoring as an added service.

U.S. Bank– Cardholders can pull their Experian credit scores once per month for free. You need to make sure you access the link directly from your U.S. Bank account.

“Calculated on the PLUS Score model, your Experian Credit Score indicates your relative credit risk level for educational purposes and is not the score used by lenders.”

What I have not quite figured out is the means by how often you can access your credit score from U.S. Bank. As you can see from the image above, when I log into my account, it shows a credit score from the end of August. Here it is over a full month later, and my score still has not updated within the system.

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American Express- This is one option I just recently learned of for obtaining your free credit report and score. Update: Since running this article, it appears the free credit reports are only available for a 30 days period once per year.

Per the AMEX site, “My Credit Score & Report offers a Credit Report and PLUS Score® from Experian, one of the major Bureaus. The PLUS Score is designed to be indicative of your overall credit risk. PLUS Scores are not used by lenders and you should not rely on them exclusively to understand how lenders will view your creditworthiness. Lenders use several different credit scoring models.”

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Barclaycard is now offering card users of select products the chance to access their FICO credit scores for free. Scores are pulled from TransUnion at a minimum once every 60 days.

Currently the feature is only available on the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard (affiliate link), Barclaycard Ring, Barclaycard Rewards, Juniper, Frontier and Carnival products, and you must register for the option online or by calling in.

In Conclusion

As you can see, there are many options out there that everyone should be utilizing. Knowing about your particular credit report and what goes into it is a valuable resource that is not to be messed with, because it will impact your credit profile for the remainder of your life.

Are there any free resources that we missed?

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Source: InACents

10/3/13- Originally published