Have you ever applied for a credit card and were anxious to find out whether you’re approved or not? If you’re approved, you’re excited for more money. If you’re denied, you get a slight hit on your credit report for even asking for the credit card. CreditKarma takes some of the guess work out of whether you’ll be approved or not with Approval Odds.
Approval Odds is just one of CreditKarma’s tools that allows you to take your credit matters into your own hands. They calculate your credit profile and compare it to over 30 credit cards, and tell you how likely you are to get approved: very good, good, fair, and poor. You get this information along with the card’s rewards, introductory APR, and balance transfer fee (if any). You can also see reviews for each card and see what others think about it. What a great way to use credit wisely!
Four of the credit cards I got “very good” approval odds for were all from Orchard Bank, which did not have an introductory APR or balance transfer fee, but had APRs between 7.90%-19.90%, which is less than many of my cards, and says it’ll save me as much as $829 (I’m assuming in interest).
CreditKarma encourages you to update your score monthly to keep these offers fresh and relevant to your credit profile. They have many different features than just simply giving you your credit score. They give you a credit report card, truly breaking down how you measure up in categories like open credit utilization, percent of online payments, average age of open credit lines, total number of accounts, hard credit inquiries and derogatory marks, which all culminates in a total summary score.
You can also compare your credit score with the rest of the country, your state, your age group, and even your e-mail domain! There’s even a simulator tool where you can give a “what if” scenario and see how it will affect your credit score. You can see if your credit score will go up or down if you get a new credit card, add a new loan, have more credit inquiries, and more.
I like CreditKarma because it’s very visual and gives you more information than your average credit report will give you. Although it only gives you one score, it’s free, and you can see your progress over time. The tools are free, so give it a try.
