Inspired by the insurance/credit-score thread I had thought…
I recently ordered my legally mandated free credit report (the agencies involved making it as hard as possible needless to say). But this doesn’t include a credit score as the law does not make the agencies divulge that bit of information. On principle don’t want to pay for information someone else holds about me.
Is it possible to estimate reasonably accurately what my FICO will be given my personal details, and whats on my credit report ? Is there an accurate description of the algoritm use to calculate the FICO score somewhere ?
The problem is, different companies use different methods to determine your score. I recently got my free reports (Easily available from all three companies online at Annual Credit Report) and paid to get my credit scores from 2 of them. The information in both of them was essetially correct, but there was a 50 point difference in my credit score from them. :dubious: You aren’t paying for the information they have, you are paying for their interpretation of that information.
Of course, any creditor that looks at your information will have their own way of interpreting it also. So knowing what the credit bureaus think of you is only a rough guide.
Yeah but I really don’t trust any “give us your credit card and permission to charge you for evermore, but you can cancel at any time, honest, we won’t make it hard for you” offers. And do they give you an actual score during the “free trial” ? The ones I looked at in the past you just get a copy of your report (so they are actually forcing you to giveyour credit card and permission to charge you for evermore, just to get something they are legally required to give you anyway).
I doesn’t seem like it should be technically difficult to estimate your credit score, obviously its not going to be acurrate to that last digit, but I just want a reasonable idea. It seems like the sort of thing that should be available somewhere, esp. given how important your FICO score is nowadays.