[M]any people when they think of their credit score they believe that it is their FICO score and most of the time they would be correct. The FICO credit score is the score most used by 90 out of every 100 top lenders in the country to assess your credit worthiness.
Banks use a lot of other criteria to make their decision as to whether they will grant you the credit that you need to buy that house you have had your eye on now for some time. Other factors that banks will consider will include your employment status and stability, the amount of debt to income ratio and your general credit health.
Now on the other hand if you ask is my Equifax credit score the same as my FICO score, that would take a little explaining. You can get your FICO credit score based on your credit file from Equifax directly from FICO itself. We’ll show you how in a moment.
Equifax along with Transunion and Experian have a proprietary credit scoring system that is very rarely used called a Vantage score. This score is the one sold by each of these credit bureaus. You cannot buy your FICO credit score from them.
The best source for credit scores, that is to say FICO scores is www.myfico.com. May we add that it is also the only source for accessing your FICO scores based on your TransUnion or Equifax credit file. Wait, what about Experian? For some reason you cannot buy your FICO credit score based on your credit file anywhere because it is not available to consumers for purchase.
When you visit www.myfico.com, for 19.95 you can purchase a copy of your TransUnion or your Equifax credit report along with the companion FICO score based on each credit file. Along with the package you will receive some very useful tools that let you play with what if situations.
These simulators may be useful to you if you are planning a big ticket purchase in the next 6 months or so. Have fun and learn at the same time.