It would be nice to live in a world where you always had the money you need. Unfortunately, that’s not the reality for most Americans. Instead, we rely on credit and borrowing money to help take care of some of our bigger expenses.
That means our credit scores can have a significant impact on our day to day lives. A strong credit score is a necessity when acquiring loans or opening a new credit card. As such, staying up to date with the status of your credit score can be essential.
Is there a way to make this task easier? Sure there is. Read on and we’ll walk you through different apps that can help keep track of your credit score.
What Is a Credit Score?
It’s important that you understand what a credit score is or else your score will just be a number to you. So what is it?
A credit score is a number that represents your creditworthiness to potential lenders of money. These include banks and mortgage lenders.
These establishments use your score to help determine how likely you are to pay back the money that you borrow. A lender is much more likely to trust a person with a high score than one with a lower one.
Credit scores are given on a range between 300 and 850. The closer you are to 850, the more responsible and reliable you’re seen to be. There are a number of great apps that can help you keep track of your credit score and ensure you’re building a strong reputation.
- Credit Karma
One of the most popular credit-checking applications goes by the simple name Credit Karma.
Credit Karma works to get free credit scores from credit bureaus such as Equifax or TransUnion. That alone would make it worth a download to your phone. But Credit Karma goes above and beyond, taking the time to monitor and alert you to any changes in your credit score.
Credit score reporting is usually accurate, but sometimes there can be mistakes. The Credit Karma app allows you to dispute changes to your score directly from the app itself. That helps make it the perfect one-stop credit score solution.
- Capital One
You might not bank with Capital One, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use their admittedly stellar credit score checking application.
The Capital One app provides users with weekly updates of their credit score, which can be greatly helpful for those looking to stay informed. But it provides a number of bonus features as well that helps it stand out from the crowd.
How so? The app actually includes a credit simulator that takes your personal information and shows what steps you could take to improve your score. It also provides industry-wide news that could be pertinent to your financial future.
The only drawback to the app is that it only pulls from the TransUnion credit bureau, meaning you can’t see how you’re reading with FICO or others. But if you need a little bit of guidance after getting your score, this could be a great place to look.
- myFICO
If the lack of FICO input in the Capitol One app worries you, don’t fret: the re’s an app for that.
The score most commonly used by lenders is the FICO score, meaning knowing your score from that source can be very important. Obtaining your FICO score might be a tad more pricy than the other alternatives.
A subscription to the myFICO service runs about $29.95 a month, which might be cost-prohibitive for some individuals. Your subscription does come with score monitoring, detailed reports, and the myFICO companion phone app.
You do get quite a detailed report via myFICO, so in some ways that monthly subscription can be worth it. myFICO presents your score across all three major credit bureaus and even demonstrates how your score has changed over time. Like the other services, myFICO will notify you via push alter when any changes occur to your credit score standing.
- Credit Sesame
How important is aesthetics to you? Do clean, concise layouts help you to better understand the information? If so, Credit Sesame might be the right credit score app for you.
Credit Sesame offers many of the same benefits as the other credit score checking applications that we’ve mentioned. You’ll get your updated credit score (in this case via TransUnion) and push alerts for any changes. But this information may be presented to you in a way that feels better and easier to understand.
Credit Sesame has put a lot of work into breaking your score down in a visually pleasing way. Various contributing factors to your score have been color-coded and graded in an A, B, C fashion. It’s easy to see within seconds where you stand and where you could improve.
The application also recommends other financing options, such as credit cards, refinance options, and no credit check financing. These provide different opportunities and solutions if your current credit score isn’t quite up to snuff.
Keeping Track of Your Credit Score
At some point in all of our lives, we’ll need to borrow money from a lender or a larger institution.
When that time comes, it’s terribly important that we have a credit score that can vouch for our good standing. The above apps can help you keep track of your credit score and plan for your future.
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