Free FICO Score

If you're looking to apply for a new loan, there is one thing that all lenders will look at very closely and that's your FICO score. This is a three digit number which can range anywhere from 300 to 850 and gives lenders an idea of how likely you are to pay back the loan.

The credit bureaus don't make finding out your credit score easy, in fact they make it damn near impossible. This is because they want to make money from selling the FICO score themselves.

There are a few sites which do offer you a truly free FICO credit score though. There is a little trick to, but I'm going to share it with my hubpage followers: All you need to do is to sign up for a credit monitoring offering program that offers a free credit scores and then cancel within the free trial period.

Most companies offer a 7 day free trial, so just make sure you read the fine print and go with a reputable company.

If you have a low credit score you can end up paying an additional $100k over the life of a 30 year mortgage. Thankfully there are some things you can do to increase your score.

The easiest thing to do is to start paying your bills on time. This makes up thirty five percent of your total score so it's important that you don't miss payments or are late on your bills. Some companies allow direct deposit from your bank account, so that might be an option.

Another good thing to do is to sit down with all of your credit reports and then go through each one (you get one from each bureau, bringing the total to 3) and making sure all the info is correct. If it's not, you'll need to file a dispute.

This is a fairly complicated process and it can be quite time consuming making sure all the information is correct, but when you think about how much money you can save on your loans it's definitely worth the time.

Once a dispute is filed it usually takes around 30-60 days to get the incorrect record removed from your account.

If you still can't get a loan with your low credit score, then it might be time to start looking at bad credit mortgages. These are specifically designed for people with bad credit - they carry a higher interest rate - because default rates are higher in those with bad credit so they need to recoup those losses.

Usually you'll need a minimum score of 640 to get approved - but in some cases you might be able to get approved if you have a co signer with a good score.