More Money Podcast - How to Check Your Credit Scores for Free - Money Minute with Jessica Moorhouse

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

For another edition of Money Minute with Jessica Moorhouse (that's me), I'm going to share with you the different ways that you can check your credit scores for free in both Canada and the US. An important thing to note, in Canada we have 2 credit bureaus: TransUnion and Equifax. In the US, there are 3 bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. No matter if you're in Canada or the US, you must check all of your scores. These bureaus are different companies, they do not share information or talk to each other, and the scores will be different.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another Money Minute with your host, me, Jessica Morehouse. For this Money Minute, I wanted to answer a question I get all the time, how do I check my credit scores for free? So in this Money Minute, I'm going to talk to you about different ways you can check your credit scores and credit reports for free in both Canada and the U.S. of A. So before I begin, it is very important to know that Canada, the U.S., a little bit different how we have our credit scoring system set up. In Canada, we only have two credit bureaus. We have Equifax and TransUnion. In the U.S.A., there is Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.

They got a third one going on down there. It's also very important that you check both or all of your credit scores because the bureaus do not talk together and the scores will be different. I have a lot of episodes in this podcast from season nine, especially that really goes into credit scoring and how that all works. But what's important is you can't just check your Equifax or your Experian or your TransUnion score. You need to know what all of them are because they will reflect different things. Okay. So now let's get to the good stuff. In Canada, you can find out your free Equifax credit score by using BorrowWell or RateHub. For your TransUnion score, you can use Credit Karma or Capital One's Credit Keeper program. They're free, but of course, they're going to get your data and ask for your email and bombard you with emails because they are companies and that is what they want. They

want your data. So just keep that in mind. If that is not cool with you, you don't want them to have your information, you of course can go directly to the bureaus, pay a fee. It is a monthly fee. So what I usually do is pay for that first month and then get all that information, take screenshots, print anything you can print off for your own records and then request to cancel your subscription so they do not charge you for another month. You can also of course request your credit report for absolutely free directly from the bureaus. Um, there's more information I think on my website and my YouTube channel. I have a video all about credit scoring and stuff like that. Um, but you can just Google it. How do I get my credit report for free from the bureaus? You have to mail in a form. It's very archaic, but that's just how it is. But you can do it for free.

Okay. And the USA. So we've got Equifax. You can use Credit Karma. You can also use Credit Karma to actually find out your TransUnion score as well. Or for your TransUnion score, you can use Capital One's credit wise tool, Chase's credit journey program, or the website Credit Sesame. For your experience score, you can use Discover's credit scorecard to find out what that score is for free as well. And for just getting your free credit reports from all three bureaus, there's a wonderful website called annualcreditreport.com. This was suggested on usa.gov's website, so it seems legit. And you can get all of your credit reports for free via that website, annualcreditreport.com. And as always, this is not sponsored. I'm just giving you some information to hopefully help you on your personal finance journey in just a few

short minutes. So I hope you enjoyed this edition of Money Minute with Jessica Morehouse. I will be back next week with another one because these are super, super fun for me to do. Of course, I will have my regularly scheduled programming every single Wednesday, a wonderful interview with a wonderful guest. Thanks so much for listening. Make sure to subscribe if you're listening on like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or iTunes or however you're listening or what I would absolutely love if you are a fan of the Mo Money Podcast. I know there's a ton of you out there. Shoot me some love over Twitter or Instagram. Give me like an Insta story and I will like reshare and all that stuff. Let me know what you think. I would really appreciate that. Okay, that is it for me. Thanks so much for listening.

Have an amazing Friday and an amazing weekend. I will see you back here next week. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.