How to Compare FICO Scores

Your FICO score is your link to seeing what creditors see. This is the core that lenders pull to approve or deny you for credit. Knowing your FICO score can provide with the advantage of being able to improve it. You can find errors and discrepancies in your reports and have them corrected, as well as watch as your score rises with each new account gained, each balance paid off and with each bad account that is erased due to age. Getting and comparing your FICO scores will help you improve your financial situations and obtain credit in the future.

Instructions

1

Go to the MyFICO website and purchase your Equifax and TransUnion FICO reports. Besides making a one-time purchase, you can also opt to subscribe to a monitoring service for each one of these reports that will allow you to receive one or more updates scores later. Individual reports are available for about $15 each, monitoring services for about $5 per month.

2

Check each section of your credit report to see how each of your scores may be affected. It is not usual for your scores to be exactly the same, and not uncommon for scores to be separated by 100 points or more. You may have an account that is not reporting to both credit firms or extra inquiries on one report compared to another.

3

Make note of any differences and try to get those changes applied to your other report if they are helpful. For example, if the loan you paid off six months ago shows a $0 balance on one report but a $900 balance on another report, contact your loan company or dispute the balance in order to get both reports to show the $0 balance. However, if one of your reports has a valid collection account reported on it, you will not want to add that to your other report.