Your credit score plays a critical role in whether you will be successful when you apply for credit. But how do I know whats my credit score, I hear you say? Well there are several sources of obtaining your free credit score and I will go through these methods here.

The first and most obvious method of obtaining your free credit score is to simply ask the lender to whom you have applied for credit. There is no particular reason why the information should be held secret from you. It may not be normal practice for the lender to provide you with your credit score, but they will not necessarily have a reason to withhold the information. Should the lender provide you upon request with your credit score it should have great relevance to you as self-evidently it is the credit score upon which the lender has made a lending decision

The next place to look for your free credit score is the internet. The world wide web is packed full of companies offering you free credit scores. It works by you signing up for a trial period to their credit score service. You then receive your up to date credit score. Then, and this is most important, you must cancel the trial offer. If you do not you may well finding yourself paying a hefty monthly fee. You should also be aware the in signing up for these offers you are required to provide some detailed personal financial information and so you should only do so if you are convinced the site is a legitimate operation. Identity theft is a increasingly big problem, nowhere more-so than on the web. In addition, even if the site is legitimate you may well be bombarded by promotional literature entreating you to sign up to their or others services for months after.

The most important component of your credit score is based upon an algorithm created by the Fair Isaac Company (F I Co, or FICO score). Some organisations have created algorithms that attempt to mimic the FICO score. These are often referred to as the FAKO score and are often provided free of charge. Remember however, these FAKO scores are an approximation to the FICO score and should be treated with a certain amount of caution, especially your credit score is not that high as it has been anecdotally noted that FAKO scores have a tendency to give a higher result than the equivalent FICO score.

So there you have it. You now know how to obtain a free credit score. You no longer have the excuse of asking the question "what's my credit score?" Get your free credit score today.