Start 2014 on the right financial foot and know what is going on with your credit and credit score. Even better is when you can check it and monitor for free and securely.
We take advantage of free credit report options ourselves and have had some minor mistakes that we could fix that did help our score some. It also allows us to stay motivated to stay on financial track. So with that, we will let you know when we see free credit score or report opportunities.
Well, today is one of those opportunities. We have personally used this option!
This is a really nice and free tool that we have used and appreciated to have for many reasons.
But first, you may wonder why we are posting this. Why is a couple that promotes paying off debt and working towards your financial goals (without more debt) promoting a tool to track your credit score? We just shared our 2×2 Plan where we paid off $100K of debt. Does this even make sense?
It does when you consider using a tool for your purposes. Credit Sesame is a free tool that you can use to get your credit score each month, view your debt balances broken down into simple categories, amongst other tools. During portions of our debt-payoff, we were paying a fee each month to evaluate our credit reports and balances. It was a helpful and motivational tool to have. We still check our scores and credit today, but for a different purpose now that we are free of our consumer debt.
Here’s what we read about Credit Sesame:
Credit Sesame is a free online personal finance tool that gives consumers an easy way to monitor and manage their credit and loans all in one place and save money on debt. It provides consumers with free access to their credit score every month, analysis, advice and tools to take control of their finances, unlock their credit potential and borrow smarter. The greatest perk of Credit Sesame, it’s 100% Free! They don’t require a credit card, and there are no trial periods.
When we say to use the tool for your purposes, what we mean is use this tool for the reasons you want to use it.
Just like your home, your finances need to be cleaned up regularly. With spring-cleaning fever around the corner, it’s time to give your winter finances a fresh look and get your credit in tip-top shape.
Did you know that the recent FTC study found that over 20% of Americans or 40 Million credit reports have reporting errors that are costing consumers money in credit card interest rates and loans? Start your spring cleaning by making sure that your credit report does not contain erroneous information that could be impacting your credit score. Keep tabs on your credit report activities and your score by signing up for free credit monitoring and score services like Credit Sesame, so that you can easily protect your financial good standing.
* Receive daily credit monitoring alerts
* Get your FREE Credit Score Monthly
* Limit ID Theft Damage
* Find Potential Errors Sooner
* Get Access to Better Loans and Save Money
We are not too concerned about our score at this point after we fixed a couple of mistakes (from doing this the first time!), since we are debt-free. But we another reason that was important to us to monitor and check was to – make sure we don’t see any loans show up on our account or changes to our credit scores (one for each of us) each month. If we see a mysterious loan added to our account next month, we know we need to take action immediately. If we see our monthly update to our credit score drop all the sudden – we need to find out why. What we are doing is trying to use a tool to protect our family and at the same time not have to pay $14-$20 per month, which is what many people do pay to check their scores and credit.
We use Credit Sesame because its one of the tools we depend upon to protect our family from identify theft. But you always have to be careful of free tools – how can you trust them? Here’s a couple of things you can find right on their site:
- They don’t share any of your information at all unless you request them to. Even their employees don’t have access to your data. Its secure and encrypted. That’s important to us.
- They are certified by the big security companies. You can even tell from the image below that McAfee runs a daily scan on their site to ensure it meets their security standards, which McAfee states “help protect you from identify theft, viruses, spyware, and other online threats.”
- They have been featured in major media which helps calm us and let us know they are legit! Just because a company offers something for free doesn’t mean we should use it. But when they are certified, we see them all over the internet and are featured by large news sources we can take comfort they are a safe option for us.
Finally, we encourage you to sign up twice – once for you and once for your spouse. You both have different social security numbers, you both are suspect to identity theft and we know first hand how things can “pop-up on one credit report” but not on the other. You will need to sign up with different email addresses (standard security practice) due to privacy laws.
Sign up today for FREE HERE and give yourself a head start to track your credit score monthly and give yourself an extra sense of security by knowing you have visibility to your report – and all for FREE!
See more financial tools and resources here!
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