Host: How do I go about obtaining my credit scores?

Vikki Frank: As we discussed in the last section on obtaining credit reports. A credit score’s actually a separate product than a credit report, and does not come with the credit report, so it’s something that you need to purchase separately.

The most inexpensive way to purchase or access your credit score is to get it at the time that you’re getting your free annual credit report at annualcreditreport.com. You there have an option to purchase a credit score in addition to your report. The thing to note there is that you don’t know necessarily what kind of score you’re actually purchasing as I mentioned in an earlier episode on credit scoring and what is a credit score.

There are many different kinds of credit scores, and generally we think of FICO as being the credit score. That’s not necessarily the score you’re going to be able to purchase at annualcreditreport.com. They are actually selling in many of the cases what’s called the Vantage Score which is on a completely different scale from 500 to 1,000. And so you may get a score that looks like 700 and looks like a very good score because you’re thinking it as a FICO score where in reality your FICO score is probably closer to your 500 or 550.

So it’s a very important to know what scores you’re purchasing. I generally recommend that consumers don’t really purchase their scores. If you are gang hauling getting your FICO score you can actually go to myfico.com and purchase your FICO score there and you can purchase a score based on the data in any of the three credit bureaus or from all three of them which is called getting your tri-merged report from myfico.

But the really the best way to access your credits score is to work with the lenders, they are interested in. So, when you go and you talk with the potential lender whether it’s your mortgage broker or a card dealer. They are going to be pulling your reports and scores. That’s really the most important score for you to know because that’s the score that they are basing their decision. They are also very knowledgeable and can talk to you about the different aspects of your report and what’s making that score.

So I generally encourage consumers to not bother to purchase their score, but to go and do it at the time that they are working with different lenders on purchasing a specific product.