PSA: Your Credit Karma credit score is basically fake
PSA: Your Credit Karma credit score is basically fake
Technically this is more of a /c/finance type beat, but since it's important info for all US Americans I figured I'd post here to reach more people.
Anyway, the credit score Credit Karma and some banks like Capital One give uses the VantageScore 3.0 model. The problem is that no lender, rental management company, or institution of substance actually uses it, and it can be off by 60 points or more from the one that they actually do use--your FICO score, with FICO 8 being the most commonly used score. Thankfully, you can see it for free using the below methods, differing on which Credit Bureau's score you'd like to see. They should all be within a few points of each other, but it never hurts to check.
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Experian: Sign up through experian.com. You can also pay an exorbitant monthly fee to see all three bureau's scores, or just use the 7 day free trial.
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Equifax: Sign up through myfico.com.
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TransUnion: The trickiest one--I think the only "free option" that isn't a complimentary feature from a credit card is the 7 day free trial from Experian.
Thanks to this I found out my credit score is actually ~20 points higher than what Credit Karma said it was. For my mom, it was ~50 points higher! That opens up a lot of doors for her in terms of balance transfers and CC debt consolidation.
Shoutout to Amerikkka for having this dumbshit system 
WTF is this social credit score nonsense? This is AMERICA. Keep that stuff in communist CHINA.
Credit Karma's also a lot slower on reflecting changes for doing anything with credit cards or more concerning things like randos attempting to open up stuff. I like to check with each of the main credit bureaus and then the smaller ones like chexsystems about once a month or so since I had my ID stolen 2yrs ago.
The fact that they are not forced to publish the formulas is enough reason to nationalize the agencies at a minimum but these fucks can't even bothered to secure the massive amounts of sensitive data they have on everyone. You cannot opt out even if you have ZERO interaction with banking. China's model is way less invasive and creepy.
I remember learning that there was another credit score formula/company that isn’t even allowed to show you your score, they only tell you whether it’s high or low lol
Anyway, lots of credit cards have FICO reporting. Are they any different?
If it says it's a FICO 8 from XYZ bureau then it should be the same as getting it through one of those sites.
Otherwise it could be one of the like 30 different FICO scores (FICO 9, FICO Bankcard 8/9, FICO Auto Score 8/9, and such) which see varying levels of use—Citi, as I found out the other day, uses FICO Bankcard 8 in its credit card applications and complimentary score reporting.
The best way to see them all for free is annualcreditreport.com. It's jointly operated by Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion to comply with some federal law that says they each have to give you a free report every year. You only get one of each annually, so if you want to keep tabs on your credit more frequently you can get one now from Experian, wait four months, get one from Equifax, wait four months, get one from TransUnion and repeat.
Credit reports generally don't include your credit score, and definitely do not in the case of annualcreditreport.com
Also you can get weekly reports from them now since the pandemic. Guess changing the domain name is too much effort
good to know, I realize now it's been quite a few years since I've used it and I didn't know that
Mine are basically the same
I'd still recommend checking the FICO 8's every so often as they might change in different ways than the vantagescore based on new events in your credit report!
one step closer to buying my first house at 75