This is a review for Credit Sesame to check my credit score, a new site which offers another way to get your credit score FREE, this time by way of Experian, which is one of the three major credit bureaus.   When you sign up with Credit Sesame, you will be asked for your social security number which is typical for a site that is going to be looking at your credit score.

Here is some of what you will find at Credit Sesame.

Under the My Finances section, Credit Sesame will assess your Credit Worthiness, Current Debt and Current Assets. Credit Worthiness shows you your credit score, and the percentage of your credit usage.  They show my credit score to be 760 which is considered good by lending institutions, and my credit usage is 15% of my revolving credit.  This is considered excellent. Next is your Current Debt. They are pretty right on, listing my mortgage and all my credit cards.  They do an analysis of your debt, suggesting that rates and payments can be improved. Current Assets is listed next. They give an estimated value for my home, and they show how much home equity I have based on that estimated value.

There is a section called My Goals.  In this area you can customize your preferences in the Goals you choose.  Credit Sesame sets up one goal when you sign up: Save Money.  You can add new goals of Refinance a Home, Borrow Money, Purchase Home, Credit Card, College Loan, Finance Car and Consumer Loan.  With each goal you set up, Credit Sesame will assess your goal and give some advice on how you can save money each month.

Under the Advice section, Credit Sesame has two options, fixed payments and “somewhat open to variable payments”. If I choose the latter, they suggested I could save as much as $336 per month if saving as much money as possible is my goal.  They ran 8,093 scenarios, analyzing my entire financial situation against thousands of products and have three proposals for me to explore. All three of the proposals suggested I look into an Adjustable Rate Mortgage at 30 and 40 year lengths and would save me from $316 to $336 per month. I would not consider an ARM so in changing the the variable to “fixed payments only”, the scenarios drops to 16, my savings would only be from $250 to $272 per month (all the loan proposals would be fixed mortgages).

On the About Us page, Credit Sesame does disclose that they are paid a small fee if I use their site to apply for and close on a loan, and indicate that they won't waste my time with loans for which I am not qualified.

One thing that comes into play that they don't know about is the fact that we live in a manufactured home.  Many mortgage companies won't touch manufactured home mortgages so I have learned that is one of the first questions that I need to ask.

Credit Sesame helps you stay on top of your finances because you can see all your loans, credit and debt in one place, and you get your credit score free. I am not sure if the score will match exactly to what you might find if you were paying Experian, but like some of the other companies that give you a free credit score, I think it is a good way to keep an eye on where your credit score is at.  I can monitor my score free, and if it suddenly dropped I would probably visit one of the three major companies and pay for my score to find out why.  Free is good!

Have you used Credit Sesame to check my credit score, or any of the other free credit score companies?