Credit monitoring is a good service to have to know how your credit is affected by your credit habits. Habits could include maxing out your credit card payments or consistently being late on payments. You will be able to see your credit scores drop as your credit card balance reaches near the credit limit and see your credit scores raise after your credit card balance goes from near the credit limit to nearly or completely being paid off.

Not all credit monitoring services are made equal. What do we mean when we say that? Some credit monitoring services attempt to calculate your credit scores using a scoring model that most lenders don’t use.

You may be wondering what scoring model the credit bureaus use. Well, they don’t use any scoring model. They simply retain the data of your credit. The credit scores come from the credit pulling agencies. Yes, the credit bureaus own credit scoring models and sell these to those agencies. Yes, credit bureaus own some credit monitoring agencies. Why do you think you see so many commercials for credit monitoring? Some of those are the credit bureaus spending millions of dollars to get you to purchase their services in order to make millions more dollars.