How Can I Find Out My Credit Score?
At the beginning of your journey to bettering your credit score, you are likely wondering how can you get your credit score for free?
There is a difference between a credit report and a credit score. Your credit score is a number that defines the totality of your credit, and the credit report explains all of the details. Being able to check a credit report for free is possible, but you are usually unable to get your actual score for free. You might want to try signing up for websites that require a subscription and then cancelling before the stated time period as a few sites do offer this. However, you need to be careful with giving out your credit card information like that.
You are not the first person to wonder how to obtain their credit score for free, and you likely will not be the last.
Generally you have two options to consider, which include:
Use a credit score estimator.
Speak with a lender with whom you recently applied for a loan.
The estimates are going to give you a range of scores in most cases. For example, they might tell you that your score is between 600 and 650. In order for these to be successful, you need to input the correct information.
You can also ask a lender to share your credit information with you after you apply for a auto loan; the entity may be able to do it.
If you are interested in looking at the big picture of your credit situation, you can order a free credit report from annualcreditreport.com once every 12 months. Once you have this report, you might be able to use the information in it to better answer those credit score estimators.
Although obtaining your actual credit score for free is a bit of a challenge, you can still get a greater understanding of your credit and financial situation by using these tools. Hopefully, you will be better prepared for your car loan application process.