Ditch the Bureaus: Check your Credit Score with Credit Karma

Obtaining credit scores has always been an enormous hassle. You go to Annual Credit Report and request it, then you get it and it shows you the report – but not the score. That’ll be an extra $8. The sheer amount of hoops you have to jump through just to get something that should come free of charge has reached a whole new level of ridiculous. But fear not, for today is a new day. And Credit Karma has forever changed the way you’ll get your credit score; making it quick, simple, and best of all free.

It takes about two minutes to sign up — if even that. You input your personal data (name, social security, address, etc) and your score just pops up. No additional panes, just your score. Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll see when you log in:

Dashboard – shows you your credit score with a graph on your score history and how it has changed over the past days and months.

Credit Compare – shows how your score compares on a national level, within the national percentile, within the credit karma community percentile, and your credit rating (very poor, poor, fair, good, very good).

Credit Simulator – allows you to figure out how your score would be affected by paying certain debts off or making a late payment on a bill. I’ve only used one other credit simulator with TransUnion and this one (Credit Karma) pinpoints actual scores instead of giving you a range of ten numbers (Ex. 640-650).

In addition, they offer a slew of useful tools to help you calculate loan payments, calculate mortgage payments, see how affordable a house is, view credit score ranges by age, rate and even domain trends — yes, domain as in what email domain you use.

The only negative aspect — if you would even call it that — is the amount of credit offers on the home page. But the good news is that the majority of it is below the fold, so you never have to take too much of it in. And we all know that nothing is ever free, so having the advertisers pay for a good thing isn’t a bad trade-off. Credit Karma is a fantastic tool for someone who is familiar with their accounts and is looking to raise their score in a short period of time or monitor it very closely, because it allows you to do those things with relative ease and no financial obligation. Since CK doesn’t allow you to view your entire credit report, it may not be for everyone, but who knows — maybe that will be an upcoming addition. Then Credit Karma would be the total package.

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