Why Keeping Tabs on Your Credit Scores Is Important
Your credit score is a measure of your creditworthiness. Your credit score supposedly predicts how likely you are to pay what you owe in full and on time. Banks and car dealerships look up your credit score when you apply for a loan. Potential employers and landlords might even request your credit score.
Three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) compile your score based on your history of paying your debts. If you’ve borrowed from a lender that reports to the credit bureaus for at least six months (usually a credit card), you have a credit score. It ranges from 300 to 850. The higher, the better.
Keeping an eye on your credit score for changes is one way to watch out for financial fraud. If someone takes out a loan or line of credit in your name and doesn’t make payments on it, your credit score will drop. Credit Karma can help you avoid this. It allows you to keep an eagle eye on your credit score by posting daily updates from Equifax and TransUnion. This is better coverage than you get with any other personal finance app I’ve tested.
Pricing: Still Free, But Expect Lots of Ads
As mentioned, Credit Karma is completely free. Yes, it does present ads for financial products, but that doesn’t prevent you from accessing your credit score details. NerdWallet, which is also free, takes a somewhat similar approach, but isn’t as aggressive. Its homepage has a few links to suggested financial products, but the service confines most of them to the Marketplace section. For comparison, the more full-featured Quicken Simplifi ($5.99 per month, billed annually) and YNAB ($9.08 per month, billed annually) cost more.
Interface and Ease of Use: Clear, Straightforward Design
As with other personal finance sites, you have to provide some personal information and connect online accounts before you can start getting feedback. In Credit Karma’s case, you must provide your address, name, and a few other personal details, such as your Social Security number, so the app can pull your credit information. Your credit information consists of your reported accounts and various other information Credit Karma gleans. This is the core value of Credit Karma.
To get a thorough profile and an estimate of your net worth (and a wider swath of optional financial product recommendations), you have to give Credit Karma the address of any homes you own and tell it about your vehicles. If you want to import income and expense transactions from your online financial institutions, you need to log in to them through Credit Karma and authorize its access to that data.
Credit Karma prominently shows your credit scores and current net worth when you first log in. But then it immediately starts suggesting financial products. They’re essentially ads, but some take your credit profile into account, so your chances of approval could be higher.
The service personalizes its home page with personal data, such as the equity you have in your home, and gives you real-time information about your finances. but it usually tries to sell you some sort of financial product.
Credit Karma’s website hasn’t changed since my last review. The menus are the same, and an Intuit rep told me that there aren’t any new enhancements or features. The site is easy enough to navigate, but the user experience isn’t nearly as state-of-the-art as Quicken Simplifi’s. And if you’re switching back and forth between the mobile and web versions of Credit Karma, you sometimes have to look in different places for the same information. I prefer services that prioritize consistency across platforms.
