good ways to monitor credit?

Submitted by Randoml9789 t3_10q5id6 in personalfinance

I'm new to adulting and would like to be able to track my credit (mostly to make sure there's nothing I haven't opened, also just as a curiosity).

I was going to use mint, but that has failed several times for me. What are some good ways to monitor credit?

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Liquidretro t1_j6nzkdj wrote

How has mint failed you in monitoring your credit?

Credit Karma is another popular suggestion here that's free.

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Randoml9789 OP t1_j6o0i5n wrote

I put in my information and I get error messages.

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Liquidretro t1_j6o2xgm wrote

That's not very specific. What the error says is going to be important to resolving the error. It's common with anything regarding credit to have to verify yourself usually with some questions about your history. Some of these can be false like it saying you took out a loan when you didn't or very old info. I was just helping a parent with one of these to verify their ID and it asked about a loan 35 years ago.

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Randoml9789 OP t1_j6o6h45 wrote

Gotcha, sorry! Your question didn't indicate you knew the issue was that I didn't have access.

It's been different on different occasions. Today it was "you've been locked out for security reasons". All it asked for was name address and ssn (so nothing that could be incorrect as I haven't moved) and this is the first time I've tried in months so it's not like I should have been kicked out... it asked more questions the first time (when I didn't have credit yet) but hasn't asked them since

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Liquidretro t1_j6o88rv wrote

I would try contacting support of you want access. Have you ever pulled a free credit report successfully?

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Randoml9789 OP t1_j6o98gz wrote

That is remarkably simple advice I should have thought of myself🤣 thank you

I have not. I only got my first credit card about a year ago

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Liquidretro t1_j6odh8h wrote

I would go pull your free credit report from the government site https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action and see if you can get that at all major companies. It won't give you your credit score but it should tell if you if the individual companies have your info correct so you know it's a Mint thing vs your credit file thing.

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jonahbenton t1_j6o0sxo wrote

(Air quote) "sign up" with the 3 credit agencies directly. Those air quotes are because you have to create an account with them to see what they already know about you.

They all have ways to provide you info for free, including email notifications of changes- and they also all employ dark patterns to get you to pay them money, which you don't need to do. As offensive as their practices are, they are the source of truth, best to engage directly with them.

In my experience, Amex is the most helpful of the card issuers in terms of free connections to credit monitoring services (a layer on top of the 3 agencies). If you have an Amex card you can look into this. But would advise direct accounts with each of the agencies.

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t-poke t1_j6o0tvw wrote

Use Credit Karma to monitor the contents of your credit report.

Don't give one single care in the world to your credit score. Do not track it, do not worry about it, do not micromanage it. Especially the score provided by Credit Karma because it's the useless Vantage Score.

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