The Sun's Financial Diary

I’m about to do something that I rarely do.  Admit that I made a mistake.  I’ve lamented before about how credit scores can be a notoriously fickle thing and can begin to drop rapidly if you start missing payments.  With a slight bit of shame, I’m about to give you a personal case study in [...]

We all know how important an excellent credit score is these days. From getting a new credit card, applying for a home mortgage, to even landing on a job, your credit score and credit history could well decide whether you will be successful in getting what you want or not. Thus, it’s increasingly becoming critical [...]

A few weeks ago, I talked about the free credit monitoring service from Credit Sesame when it was announced. I signed up for the service immediately when it became available because it is free (of course, you need to be a member of Credit Sesame, which is also free to join) and have been waiting [...]

In case you didn’t know already, Credit Sesame just added another free service to its offering. I have been a customer of Credit Sesame for several years already. Even though it offers a set of services, such as mortgage refinance (not that Credit Sesame will refinance your existing mortgage, but it will provide lender information [...]

If you are using one of the free credit score reporting services, such as those from Credit Karma and Credit Sesame, then you know what you get isn’t FICO scores that were developed by Fair Isaac Corporation and are by far the widely used scores by creditors in determining a borrower’s credit worthiness. Those, also [...]

These days, I am relying more and more on my phone for things that are beyond reading news, tweeting, and updating my FB status. I also use mobile apps for lots of finance related tasks such as mobile banking, checking credit card transactions and balance, paying bills, and, of course, trading stocks. At the same [...]

You have probably heard of, or even are using, the free credit score service from Credit Karma. But do you know that Credit Karma also has a credit monitoring service? If you don’t, then here’s your chance to sign up for the service for free during their Free Credit Monitoring giveaway. Be one of the first 12,500 users [...]

After I published the revised Credit Sesame review last week, I was asked by a reader whether Credit Sesame is safe to use. I remember a few years ago I had the same concern when Credit Karma, another website that lets users check credit score for free, first came out. Because it was so new [...]