Credit Score. Those two words can be daunting for most adults, who through the ups and downs of life know their credit score has taken a plunge for the worst. In practical terms, a credit score is just a number on a computer in a credit bureau somewhere in the world.But in reality, it’s a number that is an avid dictator of your personal life and financial security. Without good credit you might have difficulty buying a house, have a ridiculously high interest payment for your car loan, or can’t seem to convince anyone to give you a credit card. These are all trying issues that can make everyday life harder.
Avoiding the score won’t fix these problems however, and it’s about time you get full credit report by using a credit monitoring site like Credit Sesame. You won’t know until you look, and you won’t be able to start making amends towards your credit until you know what you are working with. Get full credit report now and start taking back control of your finances.
Get Full Credit Report
Credit Sesame is a free, easy to use, credit monitoring website not unlike Credit Karma. Credit Sesame offers users a one-stop shop for pulling credit reports, signing up for credit cards, and above all monitoring your ever-changing credit score. The benefits of using a website or app like Credit Sesame is that it doesn’t take any hard inquires against your score. Since it uses sources like Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian to pull soft credit checks this is a risk free, and smart choice for checking in on your finances.
Free Credit Monitoring Right From Your Phone or Computer
Get full credit report by creating an account on Credit Sesame. Like any standard Credit monitoring site, it will ask for your basic information including the last four digits of your social and address. Don’t let that discourage you though as Credit Sesame is an overall trusted and safe site to use, taking the same security precautions as banks.
Credit Sesame is free to sign up for and free to use, but they do have a couple of paid options that offer different perks for a monthly subscription. The first subscription upgrade is the Turbo, coming in at $15.99 a month. The main appeal of this option is they’ll report on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus, which is a nice way to boost your credit. With this option you’ll also be able to refresh your TransUnion score daily and pull a full credit report from TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian, giving you the most up to date information. The Platinum option will cost you $19.99 a month but gives you monthly credit reports and advanced identity theft monitoring and alerts.
Credit Sesame is also available in an app version, which is very much the same as the desktop version, just a little bit more compact. The app is available to download on both Android and IOS products, making it accessible anywhere at any time.
More Than Just a Credit Monitoring Site
First and foremost, Credit Sesame’s purpose is to allow you to monitor and access your credit score, without being penalized for a full credit inquiry. Get full credit report by simply logging into your Credit Sesame account and accessing your account Overview page. Here, they will make a soft pull of your credit and show you your current TransUnion score. You’ll also be able to see your credit trend over the last six months and your “Potential” score. One of the features of Credit Sesame that is uniquelydifferent from websites like Credit Karma, this is the score you can have if you follow Credit Sesame’s advice and follow their recommended plan to get your credit back on track. By clicking on your TransUnion score, it will take you to your Score Factors which will show you what is affecting your credit. This of course includes your payment history, credit age, credit inquires, and credit usage.
Which takes us to the next portion of Credit Sesame, your Action page. This page is used to suggest how you can work on improving your credit. It includes recommendations such as applying for a new credit card to lower your usage or refinancing your auto loan. It will also show offers from partnering credit cards and your potential chances of approval and credit limits.
One of the major features of Credit Sesame is your “free” access to a Sesame Cash account. This is a bank account that comes with a debit Mastercard, in which you can use for everyday purchases. The quotes around “free” are to indicate that while they will not charge you any monthly fees for having an account, you will be need $25 to start the account, which is common for all banks and credit unions. Since Sesame Cash is offered through Credit Sesame they won’t do a hard pull on your credit, making it pretty painless to open an account with them.
Some of the perks to having a Sesame Cash account is earning 15% cash back on select purchases, mobile device protection for any new phone you buy with your Mastercard, and the option to earn money for increasing your credit score. The latter is available to you within the first thirty days of signing up for Sesame Cash account, in which if you score improves during that time you can be paid anywhere from $10 – $100 by Credit Sesame. Credit Sesame will also reimburse you for a change in price for anything you’ve purchased on your Mastercard. They’ll refund you up to $250 per purchase, up to four times a year.
Becoming a Financially Responsible Adult
Credit Sesame is for anyone looking to get full credit report and to monitor your credit further beyond just a one-time check at a bank. Blindly spending your money and not watching the consequences will produce disaster results now a days. And in this day and age being financially conscious is a crucial survival skill for any bill paying adult. Credit Sesame is a great tool for those looking to improve their score, keep an eye on their score, or explore some of the additional features Credit Sesame offers through their paid memberships. If you have a low credit score or no credit score at all, the websites free Sesame Cash is a great place to get started with opening a bank account. By having your bank account and credit score all in one place you can easily keep an eye on your spending habits and localize all your transactions to the one platform.
Why Transparency Is Important
Pairing with Mastercard to provide a full-service bank account that can help boost your credit score is what sets Credit Sesame apart from some of the other free credit monitoring websites available. If you spring for the Turbo or Premium option, your monthly rent payments working towards your credit can only benefit you. If you’re car payments count towards your credit, why not your rent?
The transparency of Credit Sesame is something to be appreciated. When looking into the fine print for all of Credit Sesame’s features, the language they use is straight forward and easy to understand. All their policies and how each individual features work are clearly laid outfor the average consumer. By being transparent, Credit Sesame is giving consumers a sense of security which is important for a website where you are providing private information.
Since society is so mobile (in every sense of the word) having the Credit Sesame app on your phone is a great tool to check your credit on the go. This option is especially beneficial if you opt in for the free checking account, allowing you to access your funds when you need them most. It’s easy to download and just another way you should be keeping an eye on your score.
In Comparison to Other Credit Monitoring Sites
Like most credit monitoring sites, since Credit Sesame is doing a soft pull of your credit, it’s not reflecting your real FICO score, which is what banks and credit cards will actually use to approve or deny any new loans or credit cards. Credit Sesame should be used as a general monitor of your credit, to give you a ballpark idea of where you’re at, but don’t hold its information to be 100% true, otherwise you’ll be disappointed.
While the potential score is tempting and a good motivator, it’s really the potential score of anyone who wants to work on building their credit. Regardless of if you follow Credit Sesame’s recommend course of action, or you take matters into your own hand, with hard work and effort anyone can get a score into the 800s. It feels more like a bait tactic than an actual personal reflection of your spending habits.
The two upgraded account options are a bit steep in price for what they essentially come with. While the rent reports and advanced identity monitoring are great features to have and worth a little extra, it’s the other “upgrades” that fall flat. Credit Karma already offers free soft pulls from TransUnion and Equifax, and the 24/7 Experian Support should really just be included with the free membership. The price could be justified if there was one upgrade option and included both the rent reports and advanced identity monitoring, but unfortunately it does not.
It’s almost inevitable that you’ll compare any credit monitoring site with Credit Karma, which is the leading website for soft credit checks. With this consideration, Credit Karma is just a more intuitive site that breaks down your credit score in a more precise way. It also offers daily score updates, alerts you to any data breaches, and allows you to pick credit cards based off your needs (i.e., cash back, 0% interest, student, etc.). If Credit Karma wasn’t free, I could see the appeal for a site like Credit Sesame but since it is, Credit Karma is just quite frankly the better of the two sites.
Start The Path of Financial Security
In the aftermath of COVID, many peoples credit scores have taken a dive for the worse as a way to compensate for the unstable economy. With a rising housing market, the need for more fuel-efficient cars, and a strong urgency for financial security it’s important to be diligent on your spending habits and how to keep that credit score in a healthy range. If you haven’t already begun to monitor your credit score you should start now, as it’ll help you work towards financial security in the future.
When it comes to finding a site where you can get full credit report, you can’t go wrong with Credit Sesame which offers a lot of the same benefits as Credit Karma. The sites highlights are its free bank account, easy to use app, and the ability to monitor your credit without knocking your score. When compared with the more popular Credit Karma, the two are essentially one in the same. Certain people will be drawn to Credit Karma, while others will find more of an appeal in Credit Sesame’s usability. It’s all a matter of preference, but in terms of a credit monitoring site you can’t go wrong with Credit Sesame which is a safe and smart choice for any financially responsible adult.