How to Check Your Credit Score

(November 2024)

How to Check Your Credit Score

In This Article

Knowing how to check your credit score tells you where your credit score stands and what affects it. This can also aid you in making the right decision when planning for loans or mortgages.

Are you even aware that your employers, landlords, and insurers can use your credit score to evaluate your financial worthiness? If you know this, then you should be able to answer the big question, “How do you check your credit score?”

Be happy!

Because in a few minutes from now, you are going to discover ways and strategies you can use to know your credit score. Read this article patiently to the end to learn more.

To check your credit score:

1. Do One or More of the Following:

  • Contact AnnualCreditReport.com
  • Check Your Credit Card Statement
  • Sign up With a Credit Score Provider
  • Contact a Specialty Consumer Reporting Agency

2. Learn About Situations That Legally Allow You to Request a Free Credit Report

3. Understand FICO Score vs VantageScore

4. Know What Affects Your Credit Score

5. Learn How to Spot (and Dispute) Erroneous and Derogatory Items on Your Credit Report

1. Do One or More of the Following:

Contact AnnualCreditReport.com

To access your credit score online for free, visit AnnualCreditReport.com. Through this website, you get the chance to request your credit report from three major reporting companies, which are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.
Never forget that Federal laws give you the right to check your score for free once every 12 months. To add more sugar to the tea, you have access to frequent checking of your credit report so that you can be aware of the factors that reflect in your credit score. Just visit the website AnnualCreditReport.com and follow the steps to view your updated credit report.

Check Your Credit Card Statement

To get an idea of what your credit score is, observe your credit card statement. Start by confirming if your issuer offers a complimentary credit score, which automatically comes with your monthly statement for free. Log in to your account or wait for your credit card’s monthly statement to view your credit score for free.

Sign up With a Credit Score Provider

To secure constant access to your credit score, register with a credit score provider. FICO, for example, allows you to obtain your credit score for free by registering on its FICO Score Open Access program. In fact, FICO announced in December 2018 that over 300 million consumers can get their credit scores for free. In addition, register for paid membership with Experian to access your credit score anytime on its website. Create “my Equifax” account to access a free report from Equifax.

Contact a Specialty Consumer Reporting Agency

To view your credit score for free once every 12 months, get in touch with a specialty consumer reporting agency. Generally, specialty reporting organizations obtain your employment history and transaction history from companies or lenders, then share it with institutions that desire to assess your risk factor.

2. Learn About Situations That Legally Allow You to Request a Free Credit Report

To check your credit score, learn about circumstances that legally allow you to request a free credit report. Demand your credit score if any reporting agency’s action against you causes you to experience denial of credit, insurance, or employment. Request it from the identified reporting agency in the notification you receive, and such reporting agency must make your credit score available for you within 60 days, per the Consumer Right Act.

Secondly, ask for your credit score if you feel that your data may be incorrect as a result of fraud. Also, demand your credit score if you have the plan of securing a job within 60 days of requesting the report. In addition, ask for your credit score for free with respect to your consumer right under the Federal Act.

3. Understand FICO Score vs VantageScore

To correctly review your credit score, know FICO Score Vs VantageScore. They are both scoring models with different scoring formulas. FICO Score uses five categories of consumer financial information for its scoring formulas, while VantageScore uses six.

FICO Score

  • 35% payment history
  • 30% level of debt or amount owed
  • 15% age/length of credit history
  • 10% type of credit mix
  • 10% credit inquiries/new credit

VantageScore

  • 40% payment history
  • 21% age and type of credit
  • 20% of the credit used
  • 11% total balances and debt
  • 5% recent credit behavior and inquiries
  • 3% available credit.

To create a credit score with FICO, you must possess at least a six-month-old account, while VantageScore requires no minimum credit history.

4. Know What Affects Your Credit Score

To inspect your credit score, first know what affects your credit score. To grasp what reduces your credit score, examine your credit report. Here are the things to look out for when reviewing your credit report:

  • Check your payment history: it contains information on credit accounts in your name. Also, it reports data on late payments and bankruptcy.
  • Examine your credit usage and available credit: Pay attention to the types of credit accounts in your name.
  • Observe the length of your credit history.
  • Calculate the number of your recent credit applications.

5. Learn How to Spot (and Dispute) Erroneous and Derogatory Items on Your Credit Report

To prevent your credit score from going down, know what constitutes derogatory items on your credit report. A derogatory report is anything negative on your credit report. E.g., late payments, collection accounts, bankruptcy, charge-off, etc.

To remove negative information from your credit report:

  • Update accounts that are past due: Bring any past-due bills current as soon as you can, and then move forward with making any future payments on time.
  • Pay off any unpaid debts: Pay off any unpaid obligations, such as collection accounts, to immediately improve your credit scores.
  • Reduce your credit card debt.
  • Join a credit monitoring program on Experian

Conclusion

The bottom line is that you can effectively check your credit score with no stress.

First, contact the credit scoring website AnnualCreditReport.com to freely glance at your credit score from the big three reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion).

Secondly, check your credit card statement, create an account with a credit score provider, or contact a specialty consumer reporting agency. Furthermore, research the legal conditions that permit you to view your credit score for free and understand the meaning of the FICO Score in comparison with VantageScore.

Thirdly, get to know the factors that affect your credit score. And lastly, study how to find and dispute erroneous and derogatory items on your credit report. That’s all. Do you find what you are looking for? If yes, check back for more information.

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