creditkarma.com offers free credit scores!
Pile of money
A credit reporting agency is just one big database. It is astounding to me how they can charge consumers between 15 and 40 dollars a month just for access to data. They charge companies pennies for the same type of data. Due to the three-company credit bureau oligopoly, there is effectively no price competition for consumers.
Now along comes creditkarma.com
With this website, you give them some identifying information, and they generate your credit score for you for FREE. They seem to dip into your TransUnion credit file. You can go every day or every hour and they will update the score for FREE. But you really need to go only once every two weeks.
They seem to make money by marketing credit-score specific offers to you. People with high credit scores get offer A, low credit scores get offer B.
I have signed up for this myself, and I really enjoy using this site. They have a cool little scenario modeling page that tells you how your credit score would change if you did certain things, like get a new card, or pay off your card, or declare bankruptcy.
I love how this site provides a valuable service that is FREE!
Did I say FREE too many times? It is because I am, as are most people, tightening my belt in this tough economy, and so FREE credit scores on creditkarma.com makes me very happy.
