How soon can you check your credit score?

[Brad&Meera 0]

When you access your credit reports (you can do so free once per year), be sure to use AnnualCreditReport.com.

As advised by the FTC here.

[JamalNTam 1]

I just got a letter from the bank today offering me a credit card (I've had a few before and just ripped them up because I knew I didn't have any credit history yet) and I was curious so I went and looked up my free credit report from Equifax... I still have no idea what my credit score is because they don't tell you unless you pay them ten bucks for the privilege, but I was a bit surprised to see that our joint credit cards have all shown up on my report, so my credit looks pretty good! I've been in the US for almost three years but we didn't have a credit card until six months ago.

Congrats on your credit!! :dance:

Mind you, there are two types of credit scores - FICO and Vantage. If you choose to pay for your score when you pull up your report, chances are you'll get your Vantage score. It was introduced in 2005 by the three credit bureaus as an alternative to FICO, and it is very rarely used by lenders. Vantage score range is 501-990, whereas the traditional FICO score range is 300-850. In my opinion it's better to know your FICO score, cause that's what most lenders use to determine your creditworthiness, so if you're paying money to see your score anyways, I'd recommend to pay for FICO.

Just my 2cents...

Jamal uses myfico.com to check his. He had a free trial with BoA and the score for Equifaq was alot less with BoA than myfico. So do lenders look at the myfico one rather than the BoA one?

Not quite, lenders will generally use one or more of the 3 credit reports. The score generated by Transunion, Equifax and Experian may vary a bit. Since they don't necessarily have all lenders using them or reporting to them. For me, one credit report shows no hard hits and has a higher score than the others which have a couple of hits.

Also, depending on the lender, score may be only part of the equation when the decide to give you credit or not. They will likely look at your history and see if you were late on any payments, how many accounts you have open and what the balances are, and other data contained on in the report.

Yea I get that there are 3 credit agencies, the thing that I dont understand is that myfico shows a score with Equifax that is quite good, but BoA shows a score with Equifax as not very good - so I'm confused how the same credit agency (equifax) is giving 2 different scores to 2 different companies.

I'm not sure what your definition of 'quite good' is - regardless, stop focusing so much on your credit score. Work on building it, because right now, you've only been here a few months and won't be qualifying for mortgages and car loans etc etc. Be responsible with any cards you have - it's pointless to obsess over a number. Just my advice.

I was refering to my husbands score, not mine - I havent got a clue what mine is.