Credit Karma – Review

This website has it — a free credit score.  No really.  I mean it.  A free credit score?  What’s the catch you say?  The company is hoping that consumers will upsell to other products such as credit cards and other goods and services once they have their free score.  A close look at the privacy policy suggests that the site will not sell your information, nor share it with others.

Having met the CEO and knowing his background, I believe that the company is looking out for consumers.  They know that other credit report companies are getting accused of blatantly selling off personal information, so they are trying their best to help consumers understand their situation.

Here’s what the product has around your credit score:

• A credit score from Trans Union – not a FICO score, but hey it’s free
• A credit snapshot showing how you compare to other Credit Karma users
• Credit simulation – shows what if scenarios and what you should expect to have happen to your score

The second piece of the site is the product offers.  There are offers of all kinds including credit card companies, auto lenders and more.  Partners include ING Direct, Orchard Bank, Rudder, Discover Card and Quicken.

For more check out CreditKarma.com

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Credit Karma – Review

FICO® Standard – Review

FICO® Standard is the entry-level product from myFICO. For $15.95, it allows you to pull your FICO® score from Experian or Trans Union and then dive into all the details of your credit report.

The structure of this product is nice. They have 9 clearly labeled tabs divided into 3 areas:

• Credit Score
  • FICO Score Summary
  • Understanding Your Score
  • How Lenders See You
• Credit Report
  • Credit At-a-glance
  • Credit Accounts
  • Inquiries
  • Collections
  • Public Records
• Next Steps
  • Credit Disputes
  • Score Simulation

The Score Summary gives a quick overview of my score, but switching to the Understanding your score tab shows exactly what’s hurting and helping your score.  They’ve taken the “reason code” which can be a daunting industry term and translated it to things that hurt and things that help.

Next, the how lenders see you tab puts your FICO® score to work to show you your interest rate and payments tab.

The credit reports sections do a great job of being concise showing an overview of account status and then all your accounts on a single page.  Collection, inquiry and public record data can be viewed as well.

Finally, once you are through your reports, you can look for errors and dipute them with a tool that generates the letters for you.  You can also do “what-if” scenarios on your FICO credit score using the Score Simulator.

All and all.  This product has a lot of features for $15.95.

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FICO® Standard – Review

Suze Orman FICO Kit Review – $49.95

The Suze Orman FICO Kit includes most of the the credit features you see in many other credit products with a couple of other features. Right off the bat, you see that the product allows you to get 3 FICO score report pulls. But, wait, there’s a difference. These can be pulled in a number of different ways. For example,

• You can pull your TU and Equifax reports and FICO scores and save 1 pull for a later date
• You can pull your Equifax report and allow your sister and brother to each pull their Equifax [or TU] report.

The core features of the Suze Orman FICO Kit stem out of the Action Planner and it’s rich features:

• Examine Your FICO Scores and Reports
  • Your FICO Score
  • Understanding Your Score – Reason Codes
  • Credit At a Glance
  • Accounts
  • Inquiries
  • Collections
  • Public Records
• Find and Correct Disputes
• Debt Eliminator
  • Credit Snapshot
  • APR negotiating tips
  • Your repayment plan
  • Your FICO Future
• Mortgage Payments
  • Your Mortgage type
  • Your mortgage details
  • What the future may hold
• InfoVault

Suze wouldn’t be Suze if she didn’t offer advice, and she’s done a great job of organizing the product around the action planner. This includes dispute assistance, the debt eliminator, a mortgage payment watcher and the InfoVault. The dispute tool is neat as it has a simple process to generate a letter. The debt eliminator is a great tool to help you negotiate with credit card companies for better rates and develop an action plan to pay down your debt.

Watch the video to learn more. See our other credit product reviews as well.

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myFICO Suze Orman FICO Kit – Review

This 669 Score is:

• 91 points lower than the highest break point of 760 FICO credit score to get the best interest rate loans according to myFICO.com.
• 181 points lower than a perfect 850 FICO credit score.
• 669 score would be a “D” rated score on the VantageScore^SM, scale.
• 321 points lower than a perfect score in the VantageScore^SM scoring model
• 232 points away from the best tier of 901+ for VantageScore^SM
• 161 points away from a perfect score on the PLUS score system, which scale goes from 330 to 830.

Which credit score did you get? Check out my post on what a credit score includes. If you have a non-FICO score, you should probably get your FICO credit score to see what most lenders see. myFICO Score Watch monitors your FICO score by delivering email alerts and cell phone text message alerts each time your FICO score changes.

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669 Credit Score