How Often Do You Check-up On Your Credit Score?

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I’m a numbers guy, and I love crunching numbers, and that's one of the reasons that credit scores attract me as much as they do.

It's amazing how these companies can distill all of the financial actions that a person transacts, and compress them into a three-digit number system that creditors go ga-ga over.

While I make no judgment as o if the system is evil or good, unfortunately it is the system of choice that attempts to make you play by the rules of their games. With that being stated, I have been using Credit Karma to see my score every month.

Credit Karma is a TransUnion based credit score that is based on the data that TransUnion proves, so while it is not my FICO credit score, as long as I don't intend on getting a loan, it's not important for me to get an exact number.

The nicest part about using Credit Karma is that it's free. I might as well take a benefit from it using the service. In the time that I have been monitoring my credit score, I have seen an increase from bankruptcy in July of 2000, all the way back up to 789. (May 28th)

The reason that I check my credit score every thirty days is not because I want to know what the exact number is, (I'm not applying for a loan) but because it gives me an early indication if something looks suspicious.

It is basically no cost identity theft security on my TransUnion credit report. I know exactly what I do financially and how my credit score will be impacted, so if any large changes appear in my overall score, I immediately check my TransUnion report for any anomalies (One free check per year here.) Once a month should be sufficient enough to check, although there are many people out there who sign up for fee-based services like MyFICO which I think is rather costly and unnecessary. How do you feel and why?

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