CREDIT SCORE WHAT?!?!

Greetings Red Phoenix Nation!!! FICO scores are what 90 of the top 100 lenders use. Yes I said 90 of the top 100 lenders use a FICO credit score. FICO is found two places, www.myfico.com or your lender. Every other web-site you pull credit from IS NOT USING THE FICO ALGORITHM. Furthermore, those scores are not close and can be quite different depending on the site being used. I've seen them 10-78 points higher than FICO, I've also seen them 20 points lower than FICO. Point is we can't trust them for score, if you really want to know what a lender is going use then you must go to www.myfico.com Reminder, all those web-sites with the exception of www.myfico.com are owned by one of the 3 major credit bureaus - Transunion, Experian and Equifax. What's a good set up and how should I monitor my credit??? The bureau owned sites have an upside - you can find a decent site for a relatively low monthly fee - $15 a month to check your credit each month. THE KEY - I want you to monitor all three bureaus. For example: Here in Minnesota, we have a lot of people on Credit Karma, which is only Transunion. In our great state of Minnesota medical collections typically only report to Equifax. If you're only going to watch Transunion on the Karma site how would you ever know if you had medical collections?!?! This happens so often - monitor on Karma then go to buy a car (car dealers use Equifax maybe 80% of the time) they pull your Equifax and its so different than your Transunion it makes your head spin - why DIFFERENT? Its not just medicals either, not every creditor has to report to all three bureaus - so if you're going to monitor THEN do all 3. Here is what I do - I pay about $5 a month to monitor a FICO score and then I pay about $15 a month at creditchecktotal.com which allows me to pull my full credit report 3 times a month. You may not want or need all that but just know this - FICO, FICO, FICO - for Mortgages, Credit Cards, Auto Loans, Student Loans, pretty much anytime you want money on credit 90% of the time they will be checking your FICO. I could go on and on, but its a blog and I hope it helps! If you need me, I'm always around... john@redphoenixco.com