Your credit score is like your love life in college. It’s all about those high digits! Everyone wants a high number. However, the only person that knows your real number is YOU.
A super-important, yet boring topic in personal finance is your credit score. A few months ago I wrote about fixing your credit score by asking if you had the credit score of a homeless ghost. Many young people don’t know what their credit score is or where they stand.
Why should you care about your credit score in your 20s?
- Your credit score affects your pocket.
- Higher interest rate on that car loan.
- Important when finding a place to rent.
- Crucial when trying to get a home mortgage.
- Most employers ask for your credit score.
- Simply put: money!
Now that you know why your credit score is important, how do you even figure out what your credit score is? The answer is below.
A cool way to find out your credit score right now is…
Credit Sesame, a tool where you can check your monthly credit score for free.
Why should you sign up with Credit Sesame?
You’ll know where your stand with your credit score. If you want to apply for a home mortgage or even finance a car in the near future, you’re going to want to know what your credit is like. You don’t want to be hit with an unpleasant surprise when you find out your credit score sucks and that dream home is nothing but a dream.
They email you updates to your credit score. Whenever your score changes you get notified via email in case you totally forget about this site while enjoying your summer.
The one problem with this tool is that you might get a little slap in the face of reality when you see that your credit score sucks. I’ve written about how to fix your credit score and I highly urge you not to panic.
Don’t forget to check out this cool tool if you want to see where your credit score is at right now.
How’s your credit score doing?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
So far, so good. They gave me my credit score recently for the home loan mortgage paperwork now that we are getting a new house built. Apparently it was great enough to justify only using the income data from one year of online income, or we wouldn’t have qualified to even be looked at for a loan. So your credit score can affect alot!
Credit score of a homeless ghost? Well, not a homeless one…
I made some really dumb debt moves in college that I’m paying for (figuratively and literally) now. But I use CreditKarma to keep an eye on things. I’ve gone up over 100 points in 2 years!
How’d you increase your credit score?