Free Credit Score from WSJ article

How funny, I was just on the FTC site a few minutes ago for a school-related question about scams and read that section, freebird. Great minds....
 
Interesting. I got dinged on the "Average Age of Open Credit Lines" portion. Must be due to the re-financing and switching between credit cards. I also got a "C" on "Total Accounts" at 26. :eek: ?!? I need to check that.
 
Mine was only 762, last time I looked it was 805. My average card is only 6 years and I had 3 hard inquires but 44 lines and 100% on time out of 837 payments. I guess I can close newer credit cards.
 
One thing I found out about credit cards; if you have one with a high limit, hang onto it. Use it once in a while even if you don't like the rewards or cash back or whatever. We had a JC Penney card for years, didn't use it very much, found out it only had a limit of $1000, tried to get it raised, Pennys denied us because we didn't use the card enough, so I cancelled it. I screwed up on another card that had a $9000 limit but because we didn't use it much I cancelled it. Should have kept that one. The credit bureaus like high available limits on cards.

I'm not going to try the creditkarma.com site as I have my own methods and I don't enjoy putting my SS number out there.
 
Notmuchlonger said:
Sounds like you are on the ball Alan. He has a good dad :)
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Thanks. With both him and his sister, from about age 16 we would buy them luggage for birthdays just to remind them of our promise to them -- "When you're 18, you're out the door :whistle: "
 
JOHNNIE36 said:
One thing I found out about credit cards; if you have one with a high limit, hang onto it. Use it once in a while even if you don't like the rewards or cash back or whatever.
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Also true if you have a card you've had for a very long time.

I have only one credit card left that gives no rewards: a Visa from my CU which has a $20K limit and has been open since the early 1990s. I make sure to use it for a small purchase at least once a quarter, because it substantially improves both my utilization ratio and age of open accounts.
 
My credit score is going to get worse. USAA just offered me another 0% interest no-fee balance transfer. I am compelled to take them up on their offer for the 3rd year in a row. You will probably get the same offer if you haven't already.
 
ziggy29 said:
Also true if you have a card you've had for a very long time.

I have only one credit card left that gives no rewards: a Visa from my CU which has a $20K limit and has been open since the early 1990s. I make sure to use it for a small purchase at least once a quarter, because it substantially improves both my utilization ratio and age of open accounts.
Click to expand...

Yes Ziggy, that's a good point; however, JC Penney got to me when they wouldn't raise the limit because I didn't use the card enough. What an excuse. Had that card for about 15 years and had a perfect record with them. When they wouldn't raise the limit I cancelled the card and cut it up.
 
Thanks for the link. My score is 778. Just for a sanity check, is that good? Is the max 850? I have no mortgage, so my score seems good, but I wanted a sanity check.
 
Yep, David, that is good, upper percentile, just fine for getting good insurance rates, etc.

You can make it higher if you want to waste a bunch of time gaming the system, but it is entirely within the realm of very good.

:)
 
Sarah in SC said:
The website is called creditkarma.com and I checked it out. Interesting and accurate for my score (at least from the last time I checked). I check my credit report several times a year, but don't pay for the score feature.
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Do you have to pay for the score, now? The last time I checked was the first year that we could check through annualcreditreport.com . At that time, each of the credit agencies would give you a score for free which, while not the official FICO, was their credit score for you. If you wanted a real FICO then you had to pay.

I should probably look at my credit again when I have time. Just haven't got around to it. I have been following the old adage, "When in doubt, procrastinate!" My insurance bills do not seem unusually high for my area, so with any luck it's still fine.
 
You've got credit score and report confused, W2R--easy to do. The report is free, the score has always cost you something. The report is still free from each of the three reporting agencies, but now they market the scores pretty heavily as a revenue generator.
This is the only place I've seen scores that were really free.
 
So, for people like me who probably will not be taking out any loans in the future, how important is a credit score anyhow?

I've read it affects insurance costs, but someone mentioned that as long as the score is decent, probably not by much/any. I came in around 760. Anything else a retired person should worry about regarding credit score?

I played with the info a bit - seems the only thing that would marginally help my score would be to take out another credit card (?). I don't see where I benefit in any way from that, my two cards seem to be all I need, it would just be another account to track, an added potential for fraud, etc.

Since all my ins is with one company, and for a long time, I was thinking of calling and asking them directly.

-ERD50
 
Sarah in SC said:
You've got credit score and report confused, W2R--easy to do. The report is free, the score has always cost you something. The report is still free from each of the three reporting agencies, but now they market the scores pretty heavily as a revenue generator.
This is the only place I've seen scores that were really free.
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Thanks, Sarah. I probably forgot. How crummy!! There seems to be little point in paying for a credit score that isn't even a FICO score. I am embarrassed that I did that - - maybe I am repressing what to me seems like a stupid way to have spent my money! :2funny:
 
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ERD50 said:
So, for people like me who probably will not be taking out any loans in the future, how important is a credit score anyhow?
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It probably affects your credit card interest rates or maxima, wouldn't it? I don't plan to ever take out another loan for anything, or mortgage, and I don't use credit cards. I guess if my insurance ever seems like it is more than other people are paying, I would be more concerned than I am. I probably shouldn't be so cavalier about it.
 
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Want2retire said:
Do you have to pay for the score, now? The last time I checked was the first year that we could check through annualcreditreport.com . At that time, each of the credit agencies would give you a score for free which, while not the official FICO, was their credit score for you. If you wanted a real FICO then you had to pay.
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It's still that way. There are a few so-called "FAKO" scores that you can get for free (or very cheaply), but there's no way I know of for a consumer to get a "free" FICO score unless they are applying for credit and they can get the creditor to share the details of their hard pull for credit.
 
ziggy29 said:
It's still that way. There are a few so-called "FAKO" scores that you can get for free (or very cheaply), but there's no way I know of for a consumer to get a "free" FICO score unless they are applying for credit and they can get the creditor to share the details of their hard pull for credit.
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So then, is the score that you get for free from creditkarma a real FICO score? Or is it one of the proprietary scores put out by Experian and the other two? Or something completely different?
 
Want2retire said:
So then, is the score that you get for free from creditkarma a real FICO score? Or is it one of the proprietary scores put out by Experian and the other two? Or something completely different?
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No, it's not a real FICO -- it's a proprietary score created by TransUnion. For a lot of people it seems to come close to a FICO but it's not the same thing. Still, for an "rough order of magnitude" kind of calculation, it probably gives a pretty good idea about where you stand relative to most other people.
 
Sorry, I saw this after I asked:

ziggy29 said:
They don't use FICO. They use a proprietary scoring system developed by TransUnion.
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Didn't mean to make you repeat stuff. I guess that's the same score I got from TransUnion through annualcreditreport.com, way back when. Mine was much higher than I had anticipated, surprisingly enough. I'd have to check but I think it was in the 800's.
 
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Want2retire said:
It probably affects your credit card interest rates or maxima, wouldn't it?
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Yes, I suppose it does. But since I never pay credit card interest ( I mentally lumped that in with "not taking out a loan"), that is not an issue for me personally. And my CC maxes are already way above what I could imagine spending in any one month (unless the car dealers are taking CCs).

I suppose the only *real* way to know about the insurance is to get a competing quote, but I've been with State Farm a long time - not sure that counts for anything anyway, but also not too motivated to change, unless the bucks were big.

Mostly just curious, I guess insurance would be the only thing in my life it could affect (my small ARM mortgage is a done deal at this point, I wouldn't bother to re-fi, I would just pay it off if the rates rise) - certainly my utility bills, gas, taxes, and groceries are not an issue with FICO scores, so I guess ins is all that's left?

I might run this for my son, might be some value for him if there are suggestions to build up his score in anticipation of a mortgage someday. But if the suggestions are to get more credit cards, I'm not sure that's worth it.

-ERD50
 
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