Why does it cost money to receive your personal credit score?

Question

I won't check it because of the cost but it has such a great impact on my life that I think I should be able to access this freely. What do you think?

Answer 1

I think the people who put those numbers together have a right to be compensated for their efforts.

Answer 2

It's free if you apply for a credit card or loan and they reject it. You can ask to see the report they got and keep it. There is a credit check website that's free but you can only use it like once or twice in a year. I don't remember what it's called...

i think Steve D has it right

Answer 3

There is a U.S. law that will allow you to get your credit report free one time each year.

The website is...

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/i...

I hope this helps.

Answer 4

Credit scores are a proprietary technology.  Companies that create the scores are in business and the scores themselves are the result of much work in crunching numbers.  

You can get a rough guesstimate of your score at the following web site.

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/fico/calc.as...

More important of course is to make use of the free annual look at your 3 credit reports.  The official site for requesting the reports is below (the others will try to sell you something).

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/i...

Answer 5

You should check your scores to see where you stand before you try for any loan or credit.

The only place you should go is the genuine FICO website.

There are 3 scores.  One for each of the credit bureaus, Transunion, Experian, Equifax.

At least you'd have an idea of what the overall might be.

A mortgage or auto loan might check your scores and use the middle number of the three

This is a good time to get the scores as they are having a "sale" right now, for 38.28 as compared to 47.85

If you only want to purchase one score, the cost is 15.95 and you would choose the link to the right that says "FICO standard"

http://www.myfico.com

In addition, if you want to play around with this free score simulator, then you won't have to pay!

Just remember, it's not a real score, just a general idea of where you probably stand.

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/fico/calc.as...