Fico Scores, Credit Karma, Ect.

[KaleighMaeA]

So as a newbie to the whole concept of really managing my credit scores I have tried numerous different things. I would like to post what my experience has been and see how that compares with other people in this threat who I am sure have been watching there credit a lot longer than me.

I started by researching ways to get credit scores for free. Here is what I came up with:

creditkarma dot com: Gave me the option of viewing my transrisk score compiled from my transunion credit report or my vantage score. The internet research I have done seems to consistently say the vantage score is not, as of yet, highly used so for now I'm not taking that into too heavy account.

TRANSRISK SCORE 3/16/11: 661

Official Fico Score from Transunion 3/16/11: 661



Next I signed up for a free trial at myfico dot com. Myfico is using Equifax to calculate my score.

Myfico score 3/16/11: 649

Equifax score 3/16/11: 652




Then I moved onto a website supposedly very similar to the services of creditkarma only using the experian credit report instead called quizzle.

Quizzle Experian Score 3/16/11: 693

Official Fico Score from Experian 3/16/11: 599



Seems like my estimates for transunion and equifax were spot on. Now I checked my credit report for experian and nothing seems out of place on it and all seems to contain very very similar information. Why is it so much lower? Can provide more information if needed, or is it fairly common for your experian score to be significantly lower? Any additional websites or personal experiance with the websites mentioned would be great too!

[herdjohnson]

The only one I've tried is creditkarma which pulls off transunion. My trans'risk' score is 732 while my transunion score is 763. I was curious myself what the difference was; especially now that I see yours is spot on.

[KaleighMaeA]

I am especially curious as to how experian does it's scoring and how mine could be so far off from the estimate. Has anyone else out there had good success with Quizzle or has anyone even used it?

[KaleighMaeA]

The only one I've tried is creditkarma which pulls off transunion. My trans'risk' score is 732 while my transunion score is 763. I was curious myself what the difference was; especially now that I see yours is spot on.

Question for you: Did you pull your transrisk and transunion score on the same time? Just curious because if you're like me and have recently been proactive in monitoring your credit or have made recent changes I could see it even being that different after only a day. My transrisk score raised 70 points since January... granted I have used pretty much every trick in the book and actively pursued many avenues to do this, but I could see a significant difference being possible if the scores were not pulled very, very close together.

[herdjohnson]

Yes. The day I pulled my transunion score was the first day I tried creditkarma.

[KaleighMaeA]

Wow, that's strange. I guess creditkarma isn't as accurate for everyone as it is for me. Have you ever tried quizzle? I'd be interested to see how your results from that compare with mine.

[herdjohnson]

I've honestly never heard of quizzle. I'll check it out. But I don't know my experian score so I don't know how much it would help you.

[Frugal]

I did about the same as the original poster. You can get one free copy of each of your credit reports per year from Experian, and the other two major credit tracking companies.

[CCCFree]

Thanks for the heads up on creditkarma (dot) com...that's a great site to find your credit scores.

[BMEPhDinCO]

Joshua has it right - the only "official" scores are bought from myfico.com - but these other sites are useful for seeing if you are in the right range and, as they are free, it can be nice to do in-between buying your scores. There are several types of scores though, and honestly I don't think anyone knows exactly how they work, but be aware that if you are using the score for a serious reason (ie, car shopping, house buying, etc) - buy your real one, don't depend on a free site. For fun though, I enjoy quizzle and creditkarma. (My scores are usually 15-20 points lower on those sites, compared to the official ones, btw).