Mark Frauenfelder is the co-founder of my favorite sites, Boing Boing (which is a “directory of wonderful things”). Mark’s also a GRS reader. He dropped me a line the other day to tell me about a new project he’s been following.
Today, Credit.com is launching a free new online financial tool called Credit Report Card. This tool is designed to provide users with a quick snapshot of their credit reports. According to the site’s FAQ, “it breaks down your credit report into five simple-to-understand categories and gives you a letter grade for each one.”
In his e-mail, Mark offered a personal example of how the service works:
Here’s a screenshot of what a Credit Report Card looks like. It’s my own credit report card. (I’m only showing part of the report card, as I don’t want to share my personal data.) As you can see, I have excellent credit
, but I’ve made too many “Inquiries” in the past year, which has knocked my overall rating down a bit.
Interestingly, the day after I generated my Credit Report Card, I went to Macy’s to buy a gift for my wife. The sales clerk wanted me to apply for a Macy’s credit card, promising all sorts of discounts on this and future purchases. If I hadn’t used Credit Report Card, I might have taken her up on the offer, which might have damaged my credit rating. So this tool has come in handy already.
Here are some things to know about Credit Report Card:
- It’s absolutely free.
- You can request a new report card every thirty days.
- It draws its data from the TransUnion credit bureau.
- Its data comes via a “soft pull” of your credit, so using it will not affect your credit score.
Curious, I signed up for Credit Report Card myself. Some GRS readers will be wary because the sign-up process requires that you submit your Social Security Number (which is needed to pull your credit report) and asks a couple of broad but personal questions. I felt comfortable with this, though, and created an account.
My overall credit “grade” is an A. I scored high in the areas where I knew my report was strong, and I scored a little lower in the areas where I knew it was weaker. (Though I do have a personal credit card now, I try to avoid credit when possible, so I don’t have as broad an “account mix” as I could.)
The bottom of the report contained a summary of the statistics used to produce the Credit Report Card. You can see that I spend about $1000 a month on my credit card, which I diligently pay in full. (This earns me about $10 a month because it’s a 1% cash back card.)
Each section of the Credit Report Card also contains a detailed explanation of how your grade was derived. These sections contain a couple of paragraphs each explaining how credit scores work and recommending actions you can take to improve your credit.
The Credit Report Card isn’t earth-shattering. It’s not a tool that’s going to revolutionize the way you deal with money. It is, however, a useful way to monitor your progress. I’ve added the site to my bookmarks, and I plan to check in every month or two when I’m doing my personal finances.
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Thanks, this was a great link! It reminded me of a credit issue I have, and gave a nice summary of my current standing despite not giving my *exact* credit score.
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This is so cool! I got all A+s! Just think where I’d be if I had been this good a student in school! LOL, thanks to JD and all of the financial gurus I’ve been listening to, it would not have been possible without you. And I guess that having a mortgage does pay. In this one small instance.
(PS – I have no credit inquiries because I have my credit frozen with all three bureaus)
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I don’t understand why credit is so bad. I love credit since I have incentives (like prizes) for using it. Even though I’m controlled and just use with things that I would bay anyway. So I just see advantages using it.
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CreditKarma.com has a similar thing, that I thought was quite cool. Unfortunately, I have 14 inquiries in the last two years, and not enough credit accounts (10) so my credit score has lowered a bit in the last two months (715 – 680).
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Oooh that’s great. I’m all A+ except my account mix, for a total grade = A. I really appreciate the feedback from them, because it’s telling me there’s pretty much nothing I can do (short of getting a mortgage) to improve my one C grade. Good stuff!
9 years of on-time payments! *is proud*
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The website isn’t accurate at all. I had a bankruptcy in 2005 and it says my credit is A+ It doesn’t mention the bankruptcy at all and says that I have 12,000 in available credit, when I have no credit cards whatsoever.
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@Megan (#6)
You may want to use annualcreditreport.com to pull your TransUnion report. Because the data in Credit Report Card is based on your TransUnion report, it’s very likely that your TransUnion report contains errors, as well. You’ll want to fix those. It probably wouldn’t hurt to check your other reports, too.
(annualcreditreport.com is the official government-sanctioned free credit report site — it’s not a fake free site)
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This is no different than CreditKarma, pretty old news in my opinion.
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Thanks for the link! I don’t want a mortgage or an auto loan so I guess my credit score will continue to be below 700. Why isn’t my savings taken into consideration?
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I’m 23, and after looking at this, I almost feel like I’m being penalized for being responsible! I did not take out any student loans in school, and only have 3 credit accounts on record, plus one car loan. That got me an “F” in the Account Mix – and it’s too late to get a student loan unless I go to grad school! Buying a house isn’t in the cards for a long time, so am I just screwed in this category?
I’m also young – my oldest credit record is from 6/2007 – and I feel like they’re counting it against me that I didn’t get a credit card in high school like some of my friends. Shouldn’t age play a factor in these scores?
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i find tools like this aggravating. i have over $10k in credit card debt right now (approximately $13k at it’s high point), and i’m living paycheck to paycheck for the most part trying to save and pay debt down at the same time. this report gave me all A+’s, but a B- in inquiries and an F in account mix.
i understand how the credit scores are calculated and how all the percentages for each category factor into it, but it bugs me that it tells me, “you’ve done a great job of using your credit cards responsibly and avoiding high balances”… No i haven’t!! i was dumb and racked up $10k in debt that i’m now struggling to pay off. yes, my debt-to-limit ratio is 14%, and yes, that is better than a 50% ratio, but it’s still not good!
i consider myself a fairly intelligent person, but i can’t wrap my head around why a report like this would give a false sense of encouragement. According to this report, i only need to mix up my debt accounts (most likely remove some of the 20 credit accounts i have), but other than that, i’m in great shape. i beg to differ.
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The “credit report card” is an interesting concept, but if Credit.com is pulling a credit report on me anyway, I’d like to see the actual report. There’s not much I can do with a bad grade on my report card if I can’t look at the accounts that are dinging my score. Why not also provide the actual credit report?
Quizzle.com launched with the report card concept 1 1/2 years ago. It grades you on your overall credit situation, but also gives you a free credit report (and free credit score) so you can make sense of your grade and actually do something to improve it (if your grade wasn’t what you had hoped for), including disputing inaccuracies online.
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This is great! But unfortunately I’m Canadian and it won’t work for me. Is there anything like this in Canada that you know about?
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I liked this report much better than Credit Karma, and I discovered that my account mix was poor, which I had not known before.
I think this compliments your free credit report well, since you can check it once/30 days. Good free alternative to MyFico, as well.
Thanks for keeping us informed!
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Wes- I am 23 too, and only have *one* credit card, no loans of any sort, ever, so my grade is also low in that area. That and the age of my credit are the only things that hurt me.
Makes me wonder if it is better to open another CC (for my business, which would be useful potentially anyways). I plan to buy my next car outright, and when I buy a house to pay it off quickly, so I think I will be stuck with a low grade in the mix category- of courses, the CC companies *want* you to have credit- just not too much, right?
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It must be noted that, as Dave Ramsey says, “a FICO score is an ‘I love credit’ score”.
In other words, FICO scores, this Credit Report Card and the like judge your interaction with credit. It’s by, and for, companies that make money off of consumer debt. So there is a natural bias towards using credit.
At the end of the day, it’s not about how much money you have, how much income you earn, or even how much money you have borrowed. It’s about predicting whether or not you will be a profitable customer.
For consumers like us, the benefit of knowing this information is that it tells us whether we will get the best interest rates when we apply for new credit.
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@Wes (10) – yes, age should play a factor, and it does. Because you are young, and have less credit history, you are a greater risk to them. Sorry!
I’m up to 13 years of responsible repayments – you’ll get there too.
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Your credit score is the most overrated number in personal finance. If you already own a home (or are happy wherever you are), and don’t need to borrow money with credit cards, it becomes almost completely irrelevant.
Sure, a few employers will check it (most wont). And cell phone companies will make you pay a deposit if you don’t have one, but it’s not nearly the huge, life-changing thing that the internet would imply.
Go ahead, ask me about ruining my credit score and all the things I was unable to do because of it (there are none, except “get credit cards”, which I didn’t want any more, anyway).
If you want to worry about numbers, worry about your checking account balance, or your blood pressure. Both are far more important.
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I got a C which is due to my “F” in payment history. I have a collection with BMG Music that I am in the midst of disputing.
Pretty cool tool! As soon as I clear the collection I should have an A or B.
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The CRC is too optimistic. It scored me A (i.e. FICO: 750-850 and PLUS Score: 740-830)
whereas my FICO is 698 (TransUnion – 3 days ago) and my PLUS Score is 738 (Experian – yesterday).
Nice too but misleading.
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My account mix was a C- everything else was A+ but the info was funky enough to make me go to annualcreditreport.com because I was due again anyways. Sure enough Transunion thinks I still have a credit card account open that I don’t. So big deal I am using 1% of my credit card instead of 2% they check it tomorrow and I will be using 0%.
@18 Tyler – I agree with you except I am now finding that I get good credit discounts on my insurance policies for houses and car. This is saving me a few hundred a year.
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What a great tool! Even if it is too optimistic or inaccurate at times, I think it will be especially helpful to those who have a hard time figuring out how to read their credit report. Thanks for the great post.
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I have to get on and check my reports anyhow, make sure all is clear on them. (Haven’t done it this year yet, I probably shouldn’t keep putting it off.)
I’m just not in the mood to see a huge outstanding student loan balance. Nooooo thanks, honestly. I have my nice credit cards, I have those loans and when I got my car loan in June I was told the only thing holding me back from qualifying for the best on my own (hubby cosigned was the age of my report. Otherwise, as far as my bank was concerned, I was the perfect loan candidate, which she complimented me on seeing as I’m 21 and was 20 at the time.
Really, other than student loans I’m not in the market for anything, so I just like to make sure I’m not getting errors popping up in the meantime. (I had an account settled since the last time I checked, which I had no clue about until I saw it on my report.)
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My report card says ‘B’ due to the fact that I have a young credit history (arrived into US 6 years ago for Grad school). No mortgage reduced my rating in the account mix category. The major killer (F) in my report was in the category of payment history. I have 2 late payments that occured 2 years back. One amongst them was 30 day past due. Since then my payments have been regular (since I stopped using credit cards). But it has not moved beyond the 780 score for me.
In the past (2005) I had one store credit card from Kohls, which I never used and also shredded it.But it reflects on my credit report as acount in good standing. If I cancel that account will it make a difference? Since I have heard that store credit cards dinge your score…!
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I had all A+ except in Account Mix, where I had an F. I don’t have a mortgage or car loan… seems a bit silly to give me an F just because I don’t have debt. They really want me to finance my next car purchase.. haha yeah right.
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I wish they had something like this for Canadians…
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I second Dana (#13′s) comment. I’m Canadian and unfortunately there are no free options for us that don’t involve some sort of scam.
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@Tyler – as I understand it, most insurance companies pull it as well, so it could affect your premiums.
I’ll second (or third) the comment that Credit Karma has been doing this “report card” for at least a couple months now. I got dinged one month due to a higher than normal credit card bill. Since Chase doesn’t report a credit limit it showed up as 100% utilization.
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A’s all day! i take pride in my credit.. it’s the only thing i’m good at lol
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From the terms of use:
“We may retain information that you provide, and we obtain, during your use of our Web Site. We may, from time to time, use this information to match you with offers for products and services made available through various Providers. We will make these offers available to you at your convenience and there will be no obligation to accept any offer.”
Anyone getting badgered?
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Pretty cool – now how to I cancel? I can’t find it.
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@Chris Brown (#9): I don’t have a mortgage or auto loan, and last time I checked my credit score it was well above 700… also, income and savings have absolutely NOTHING to do w. your credit score.
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This looks like a good tool but after reading their privacy policy and terms of use I cannot get myself to give up my social #
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Thanks for posting this link. I’ve avoided looking at anything other than the occasional account list to check for inaccuracies because of the hole I’ve been digging out of. I just didn’t want to see how bad it still was. Today, because of your post, I caved. Glory be! I expected that big red “F”, and when the “B” appeared, I nearly danced around the room. Sweeeeeet progress.
Thanks!
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Oh no, not TransUnion. I already use CreditKarma and they pull from TU as well, and it is the *worst* of the three bureaus for me. Not only does it feature my lowest FICO score, but when I tried to correct a few items on the report, I got the song and dance that it’s not TU’s job to investigate items that I dispute, that I have to go through the creditor and then hope they tell TU it’s been fixed. Last I checked that was *not* what credit reporting law says… but it’s on me to prove it and put *them* through the wringer. I wish more of these online services would go with Experian or Equifax. I have never had a problem fixing errors with those two.
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Oy.
#9: Nobody takes your savings into consideration unless you’re getting a loan from the bank where you hold your accounts.
#10: It’s against federal law to discriminate according to age so no, I don’t think credit scores will ever take age into account.
You might look into PRBC.com to see if they can be helpful to you building up a credit history. At the moment they seem to be most useful to folks who are trying to get a mortgage, but in the future their report may come into wider use. It will never cost you money to look at your report, although it does cost money to get a verification from your landlord or utility companies.
It *is* possible to get a credit card and not run into trouble. The question is can you reserve it for a few small purchases each month and then pay them off immediately. I wish I’d thought about that fourteen years ago; I wouldn’t be in my current mess.
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Yep, way too optimistic – by 50 to 100 points in the various scoring models.
Gave me an A and estimated my PLUS score at 740-830, my actual PLUS score from TransUnion is 701 (late cc payments 4 years ago).
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Hey J.D.!
I am a big fan of yours and love what you put out there on your blog. but there is one thing…
I’M CANADIAN!!
So a parts of the tools does not apply for us Canucks…
Do you have an equivalent to this?
Thanks!
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I understand the need for credit report cards, but are there practical tools that will allow you to follow up on the parts where you get a bad grade? It’s one thing to be told your a poor steward in certain areas, but without an action plan it is difficult to change.
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I always thought there was a market for products like this that “simplify” the interpretation of credit reports. I personally don’t have any issues figuring out what is relevant on the reports for my wife and I, but I know my parent’s require a lot of help.
Personally, I’ll probably just stick with the annual free reports from each of the three agencies. However, I would feel comfortable recommending this service for those that need some help with a basic game plan for improving their credit scores.
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I personally did mine and got an A too. YIPPIE!!!
There is one important piece i think you forgot to mention.
This Credit.com product educates you as to what your score means. I have never been offered as much education material when I get my typical credit report.
Best of all, they sort through the dozen or so scoring models that exist and tell you how you would line up in their system too…… NICE !
I just heard that Credit.com won the ‘Best in Show’ at the Finovate Conference in New York today.
I would recommend this product to anyone.
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I found #11′s experience to be informative. Does this thing really work as well as people say? He has done a “bad” job and got A’s! What’s up with that?
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I love the interface for this. Very easy to understand and very easy to just grab a quick snapshot of how you are doing although it would be nice maybe if they pulled data from more than just TransUnion. For free this is a great tool!
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My credit mix is an F, making my overall score a B. I own my home and cars outright. Having 12 paid off student loans and 20 perfect credit accounts means an F because I dont go into debt for cars. I would think the non-auto installment loans mixed with the revolving history would mean much better, with Fs being reserved for those with no mix.
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#11 makes perfect sense. The debt to limit ratio is low and he pays on time. And frankly Ive paid off more than that in 1 year working not much over minimum wage. So from my perspective it’s not much debt. Of course we all have different ideas of that.
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Some people are bringing up valid points. Your score goes down if you don’t have a wide mix of credit accounts (ie, car loan, house loan, CC’s). For those people who pay cash outright for large purchases, is there a work-around that will keep their credit score as high as possible?
For example, how do the three credit report companies (Experian, TransUnion, Equifax) factor in loan accounts? Is the length of the account a huge factor, or just the fact you had an account?
I’m thinking that a person who has the full amount of cash to buy a car could open a loan for a small amount anyway (ie, $6,000) and pay it off in a very small amount of time (say, 3 months, so not much would be lost in interest) just to have that loan on their report? Or would the duration of the account be too short to make a difference?
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This is a British example: I moved to the UK, and was planning to buy a house there. I had savings, and no debts whatsoever. But no credit rating, because I had just moved to the UK. The friendly lady in the bank mentioned this would create difficulties in getting a good mortgage rate. She recommended taking out a (totally useless) personal loan, and pay it back every month for a year. That would help me to build a good credit rating fast.
This shows how ridiculous the system is – if there’s a paper trail, you’re reliable… If you make debts and pay them back, you are considered more reliable than a person without debts.
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I’m not sure what to make of this. At first look I’m quite enthusiastic about it because I got a score of C, A+,A+,A+,A+ with an overall A. I filed for bankruptcy 2 years ago but have been in good standing with multiple credit cards since then. My debt ratio is also good but I’m not quite sure I buy the fantastic rating they gave me this soon after my bankruptcy (damn divorce!). I pulled my credit score last spring and it was around 600. It cant have possibly gone up that much since then could it?
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I used to work at a credit bureau building credit scores. A couple of my coworkers were partly responsible for the development of the Vantage Score. All my projects were custom models.
There is an inherent assumption these scores make that most people ignore.
These scores asses the likelihood you will go bad based off of your past transaction history all else remaining equal.
The last part is key. Nothing remains equal. The very fact of applying for more credit, or being granted a new line/loan/mortgage etc changes things. Your risk profile changes.
What’s more, these generic scores DO NOT factor savings or income in any way shape or form. The CB’s don’t have that data. Therefore, the responsibility shifts to the lender to understand whether the consumer can afford to service their new debt in conjunction with everything they currently have.
To the poster who indicated a large debt amount but low utlization; yes debt amount plays a factor in your score but the utilization plays a larger one. Again since the models don’t factor your ability to service the debt going forward they score you well since you have serviced it in the past.
Lenders that require proof of income, lenght of employment, and proof of savings are better positioned to accurately gauge a consumers risk on new debt. But that still assumes a recession doesn’t come along and force them out of their job or an accident or illness otherwise prevents them from working.
Loaning money is risky business and even with today’s modern computers and massive databases lenders do not see the whole picture as it stands today and at best are slightly better than random at guessing what the short term future will bring.
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This thing gave me an F on payment history because I had two late payments in the past 7 years. And it said my credit score is fair (under 700). It’s interesting, I just got a mortgage at 4.75% because my credit is very good (over 720). Those same late payments were on my credit report when I was given a good to very good score by all three reporting agencies. Perhaps the inquiries now on my account dragged the score down, but it doesn’t explain why 2 late payments in 7 years gives me an F.
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