FYI's of the credit sites on the web!

Greetings everyone in credit world!! It has been so long since I've blogged, feels good to be back. I took a break from it all because my content was being stolen and re-published other places. I've been told this is a compliment of some sort, and I'm over it. I owe my people information and content that you can use, so let's get on with it already! You pulled your credit from an online service - credit karma seems to be a popular choice right now so I will use this as an example of what its good for and what its not good for. FIRST SOME EDUCATION AND REMINDERS - All sites that you pull credit from with the exception of FICO are owned by one of the 3 major bureaus - Experian, Transunion and Equifax. Karma is owned by Transunion, just an FYI. IT IS important to know you do have 3 credit reports you need to be looking at. Not all creditors report to all 3 bureaus. For example - did you know in Minnesota most medical collections will only report to Equifax. That means if you're only looking at credit Karma, you won't see those items on your credit. Creditors pay a membership fee to the bureaus to report to them, it is voluntary for them to report to any of them much less all three of them. THE SCORE YOU SEE - More complete confusion for people*** The score you see from a random site is a credit score but its not one that really matters in regards to lending. When I speak of lending that means for a mortgage, car / trucks and recreational, credit cards and personal loans. I don't want to call the scores from those random web sites junk because those sites do serve a purpose but those scores are not relevant at all in regards to lending. More on that purpose later. CREDIT EDUCATION - so these sites usually have a section on how to improve your credit score. That education is how to improve the score they are providing you - it can sometimes work with FICO but to explain all that would cause more confusion. From the many sites I've seen, THEY ARE WAY OFF FROM WHAT FICO CALCULATES. If you ever notice and pay attention they will often tell you the way to "improve your credit" is to add a credit card. Oh and they have a list right there for you, how handy of them to give you a list of cards that they know you will probably qualify for. Or they might say to refinance your car - oh wait, another hand list of creditors you can use to refinance your car. Are you seeing a theme to this madness? They're in cahoots! So what's the point of them and what should I be using if any??? If you feel like you need to monitor a score or want to know what's going on with your credit and be truly engaged then you need to monitor all three bureaus and pay for it. You pay your doctor, you pay the mechanic, you pay a gym membership, pay for this. Find a site you can see all three on one site creditchecktotal.com is one that I personally use to see what is on my credit -IT IS FOR INFORMATION USE ONLY NOT SCORES. I also monitor with www.myfico.com quarterly for about $5 a month. That way I get an idea of my scores and I can use the other site to pull my credit 3 times a month and see what's going on with it. For both, its about $20 a month and that's getting creditchecktotal to give me a discount which anyone can do by calling and threating to cancel, they will discount to keep you. Its worth $15 a month but not want they really want to charge you which is about $30. You can just use one or the other, www.myfico.com has other products but this mix works well for me and has for many of my clients. Be aware of where you are pulling from and what the purpose is. Don't let banks or info on the web confuse you - FICO is what 90 of the top 100 lenders use in regards to lending. Well, The end If you need me, I'm always around john@redphoenixco.com www.redphoenixco.com @deletebadcredit