Intuit Credit Karma
San Francisco-based Credit Karma believes consumers shouldn't have to pay for their own credit scores, "We're a completely free site that allows consumers to track and monitor their credit all online and all for free," said Credit Karma CEO Kenneth Lin.
Closing a card can help your score if you have too much credit available. To see if this is the case for you, you can see the effect of closing a card and other actions on your score at sites like Credit Karma.
According to the Consumer Financial Bureau more than 3.5 million card members, were sold payment protection, credit tracking and identity theft services without its their consent. Credit Karma gives tips to avoid a similar headache and how to safeguard your wallet.
American consumers rarely have been such a bad bet. With unemployment up and salaries down, credit worthiness has plummeted. Nearly half of American households have credit ratings that are high risk, according to Credit Karma, and the average credit score has dropped more than 20 points in the past three years.
If you’ve got a good or improving credit history now is the time to scout out lower-interest credit cards that could save you hundreds of dollars annually. “It’s a buyer’s market for credit-card consumers now,” said Ken Lin, chief executive of CreditKarma.com, which develops free credit tools for consumers.
Credit Karma makes Inc. Magazine's Top 5000 List of fastest growing private companies in America.
Despite the fact that there is a government website, AnnualCreditReport.gov, where you can get your credit report for free once a year and legitimate sites like CreditKarma.com where you can get your credit score for free (with no "trial period"), lots of people still sign up for these credit monitoring services.
These top-scoring cards are also some of the hardest to qualify for, typically requiring a FICO credit score of 700 or greater, according to CreditKarma.com, a consumer credit website.
CreditKarma CEO Kenneth Lin recommends that consumers open new accounts over the Internet, taking and saving screen-shots of exactly what products they are applying for. Unless a call is recorded, applying over the phone leaves consumers without proof of what happened during the transaction.
The recession and its aftermath, including stubbornly high unemployment, did a number on Americans’ credit scores. The average person’s credit score is 655, according to Credit Karma.