Is Checking My Credit Score Too Often a Mistake?

People sometimes hear that credit checks lower a person's credit score. This is only half-true; checking your own credit has no effect on your score. Checking your score more often can never be a mistake, and only improves your knowledge of consumer credit. Only in very rare circumstances could a personal credit check hurt your score.

Identification

Checking your own score too often is not a mistake. Personal credit checks do not lower your score, and the credit bureaus update their databases all the time; the more often you check your profile, the more up-to-date knowledge you have about your credit score. Americans tend to have a poor understanding of how the credit rating system works, so the more you see your payment history changing your score, the more well-rounded your financial literacy.

Considerations

It is possible that a credit check through a third party, such as a credit monitoring service, could harm your score, according to Experian. Most credit monitoring services arrange for credit checks by clients to count as a personal request, but a service not set up properly for this could appear as a hard inquiry on your report. Hard inquiries only count for a few points, but can add up to real damage when you have more than five or six on a report.

Benefits

Millions of people each year fall victim to identity thieves who apply for loans under their names. The more often you check your score, the more likely you are to catch a new, falsified account before the thief has a chance to ruin your name. If you wait several months to check your report, you could have an account in collections and more headaches than if you checked far more frequently. You can also identify problem areas in your credit management skills and plain old errors before they become too serious.

Tips

Check with any service that pulls your report to ascertain how the check will appear on your credit report -- don't assume everything counts as a personal check. You do not have to review your credit profile every day, but at least check your credit before applying for a loan so you can correct mistakes or look for ways to boost your score.