Every time I mention our right to receive three free credit reports per year through www.annualcreditreport.com (one from each major credit bureau), I get a handful of readers contacting me about where to get their free credit score.

The score, after all, is what lenders use to determine your loan interest rate, or if you get a loan period. It’s also used for a host of other reasons I won’t get into here.

The score is based on data found on your credit report, which is why it’s important to make sure there are no mistakes. But I’m with consumers who wish they could get a free score.

Of course, the bureaus and Fair Isaac, the Minneapolis-based company whose FICO score is widely used, know that we will pay for our score. So why would they give it away?

A new site just came to my attention that does give you a score for free. Credit Karma offers a free score that is based on the same 300 to 850 range developed by Fair Isaac. In fact, Credit Karma pulls your score from one of the three bureaus you’d use to buy your score.

But the score you buy may not be the score your lender uses. Each bureau has its own credit score that may differ slightly from the one your lender uses or Credit Karma pulls, so ask if you’re worried about your score being on the margin.

AAAARRGGGGGHHHH! That’s for all of you frustrated credit consumers out there. Can they make this stuff any more complex?

My Credit Karma score, a 788, jives with the score I pulled from Fair Isaac earlier this year.

Two mentions about the site:

1. I had trouble getting the site to load properly with Firefox (I have an older version).

2. The site will ask you for your social security number, address, birthday, and phone number– info it will use to pull your score. But you may not be comfortable with that.

For the merely curious, type “credit score simulator” into Google and you should get a site or two that will estimate your score without needing that sensitive data.

What’s in it for Credit Karma? They try to entice you to click on offers for credit cards and other services that are tailored to your credit score status.

Happy scoring!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 1:40 pm and is filed under credit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.