3 Reasons It’s Important To Know Your FICO Credit Scores: Get The Facts!

This post is sponsored by MyFICO.com, but all opinions are my own. Please see below for additional disclosure.

We learn a lot of things in school but I’ve always said one major thing we’re missing in our education system is how to properly maintain finances and understand the system.  Many of us get out of school and go into the real world either doing things the same wrong way our parents did it or stumbling and having terrible credit by the time we’re ready to buy our first car, home, graduate from college or even get married. Notice how all of those are major milestones in life and that each of those milestones can be affected by your credit in some way.

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The first steps to taking charge of your life and your credit journey are clearing up confusion and getting the facts! Did you know that there are non-FICO credit scores and FICO credit scores? Don’t feel embarrassed if you didn’t know, many of us weren’t taught that. So… why is this important information?

The fact is many people think every credit score is a FICO® Score, sadly that isn’t the case. Even I thought this same thing for a long time, but I’m glad I was able to use myFICO.com to find out what my real scores are. A lot of the FREE, educational or other types of non-FICO credit scores, can be substantially different than FICO® Scores, which can leave you with the wrong understanding of how lenders see your credit standing.  I don’t know about you but I’ve had situations where I’ve been monitoring my credit thinking everything is fine and dandy and then I went to apply for something only to find out that my score wasn’t the same.  I know this can all be quite confusing so we’re here to offer some insight and some tools to help you get on the right track.  Check out my 3 Reasons It’s Important To Know Your FICO Credit Scores!

3 Reasons It’s Important To Know Your FICO Credit Scores

1. Just knowing that you have at least THREE FICO credit scores is important, many of us use monitoring tools that only give information about one bureau. But you have FICO Scores for each one of the three bureaus. It sounds good to be in the know, but if you’re only getting one score and lenders are taking all three into consideration you’re not really doing yourself a complete service.

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2. Reason two gets a little tricky, did you know that you have more than one type of FICO® Score for each bureau? No, that’s okay, this is why we’re here to learn lol.  90% of top lenders use FICO Scores when making lending decisions and different lenders use different versions of FICO® Scores when evaluating your credit. For instance, Auto lenders often use FICO® Auto Scores, an industry-specific FICO® Score version that’s been tailored to their needs. So… what does that mean for you? In short, if you can get an even more precise understanding of how lenders will evaluate your credit by accessing the exact FICO® Score version your lender is likely using, you’ll have better results. If you’re not stumbling around without the proper information, you’ll make more progress over time.

3. Last but not least, the more information you know… the more you can share with others. I’m an advocate of the “each one, teach one” mantra. If many of us would have had the proper education and understanding of how credit works, there may not be so many of us in unnecessary debt.  I’ve often seen 2 sides of the spectrum; people with too many credit cards and debt or people with too little credit out of fear.  When you understand how the system works, you have a better chance of using it to your advantage and in turn being able to teach our youth and future a better way of living.

Now that you’ve heard a few reasons it’s important to know your FICO® Score, I definitely want to help you get the facts and provide you with a way to get your scores! I used myFICO.com to gather all 3 of my FICO Credit Scores, it was great to finally know exactly what scores lenders would likely see. I opted for the 1 time FICO® Score 3B Report, but there are options for 1 bureau as well as continuous monitoring. I really hope this information has been helpful to you all, we wish you the best of luck in your future credit endeavors. Now it’s time to get started!

Ready To Get Your FICO Scores? Click Here

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Please note that a commercial relationship exists between our site and FICO that may include FICO providing us with product and other forms of payment. The views of the author(s) herein do not necessarily reflect the views of FICO. FICO is not a credit repair organization as defined under federal or state law, including the Credit Repair Organizations Act, and does not provide “credit repair” services or advice or assistance regarding “rebuilding” or “improving” credit records, credit history or credit ratings.