I use Credit Karma, a free service, to look up one of my credit scores, Transunion. You can update your score weekly and it keeps track of your score over time. When you are applying for credit cards, it is good to know what your scores are.
Credit Karma also shows what affects your scores by giving you a “Report Card”. The tabs below are what affects your score and the ratings can show you what you need to improve on to increase your score.
So far this has been a good service to use but it has now gotten even better. Previously you did not know exactly what accounts were open, closed, or in good standing. I had used annualcreditreport.com to get my free report with all 3 agencies. Now the site offers a full credit report for the Transunion agency. To see the report, click on the Full Credit Report Tab on the left hand side of the page.
When you click on the tab, you will see your full credit report with all your accounts, your credit inquiries, any accounts in collections, and recently open & closed accounts. Its a good idea to periodically look at your report to see if there are any discrepancies or negative items that need to be addressed.
I highly recommend using this free service to help monitor your credit report & score. Remember there are 3 credit agencies and this only monitors one.