For a few months now, Mozilla and Pocket have been testing a new initiative to bring users a high-quality personalized experience while also protecting their privacy. Today, Mozilla announced that their experiment has been a success, and now they are...
Music of the Spheres, the much-lauded music from Destiny, will finally be released officially to the public "in the near future," said developer Bungie. The soundtrack, written by acclaimed composer Marty O'Donnell, actually leaked out last year than...
Your credit score can help you buy a house, get a loan, or even just finance a new phone. Here are a few ways to keep track of it.
There are few things more important to maintain than your credit score. Whether you're applying a new credit card, a house, or a phone line, your credit score will be an instrumental factor in your approval odds. If your credit score is too low, you may have to pay an astronomical security deposit — if you're able to get approved at all.
Needless to say, a poor credit score can be hugely detrimental, so save yourself some trouble and start monitoring your credit so you can take control of your score. Whether you have outstanding credit or you just went through your third bankruptcy, it never hurts to have an idea of your credit situation, and it's never too late to start working to improve it.
If there's any one app you should use to monitor your credit score, it's without a doubt Credit Karma. This free service shows your TransUnion and Equifax scores, along with breakdowns of any credit lines on your record — that includes credit cards, auto loans, personal loans, and more. It also provides tools to help you improve your credit, as well as suggestions for new loans and credit cards you might qualify for.
While it's a bit late in the year, you can even file your taxes through Credit Karma. Unlike Intuit (who makes TurboTax), Credit Karma doesn't charge any fees for filing through its services — that means it also doesn't bug you to try a paid version half a dozen times when you're trying to file. I opted to try Credit Karma's filing service for the first time this year after comparing results with TurboTax, and it worked just as well as you would expect.
If you don't mind paying a bit for a premium membership, Credit Sesame can offer more information than Credit Karma, pulling credit reports from all three bureaus with a paid account. You can still see your Vantage 3.0 score with a free membership, however, and Credit Sesame has the added benefit of identity protection — even providing up to a million dollars of identity theft coverage at higher paid tiers. Even with a free account, though, you get $50,000 in coverage.
Download: Credit Sesame (free)
Mint is another great service that helps you keep track of all of your finances in one place. It's made by Intuit, so you can sign in with your TurboTax info, and you can link any of your financial accounts (banking, credit cards, utilities and bills, etc.) to Mint to monitor your spending. It breaks your monthly spending into a pie chart, and displays your cash flow in and out.
Like Credit Karma, Mint shows you your Vantage 3.0 credit score as provided by TransUnion, and offers suggestions for various credit cards and loans. You can customize your Overview page in the settings to only display the information you care about, and set up push notifications or emails for upcoming bill alerts — you can even use Mint to create a calendar for your bills.
Most credit card companies these days offer free credit monitoring from within their apps. Most will display your FICO score, but it can vary from bank to bank. In fact, some banks don't even require that you be a customer to get a free credit report — Discover is a prime example with its popular Credit Scorecard service.
Plenty of other banks do this, as well. Chase provides you with your Vantage 3.0 score, as does Capital One (you don't have to be a customer of either bank to check your score), while banks like American Express, Citibank, and Wells Fargo all display your FICO score.
Do you use one of the apps mentioned here, or is there another app you depend on for monitoring your credit score? Let us know in the comments below!
Plenty of companies are getting in on the live-streamed fitness class thing, so it's no surprise to see CamSoda leaping on the bandwagon. The webcam platform is launching CamSoda Fit, a way for folks to partake in hour-long, live fitness classes to h...
As the domestic football season starts to wrap up, all eyes are turning to the World Cup in Russia. EA, unsurprisingly, wants to celebrate the competition with a video game tie-in — this year, however, it will be released as a free update for F...Get what you need.
Amazon has a huge selection of PC components down to low prices for one day only. The sale features a variety of major brands like Toshiba, HyperX, Logitech, and more. The gear includes both internal parts, like the Seagate 1TB solid state hybrid drive for $60.99, and external peripherals, the Razer DeathAdder gaming mouse for $54.99
Here's a few of the other items on sale:
The full sale has even more awesome stuff on sale.
T-Mobile says this will be good for consumers, but is that true?
On Sunday, April 29, 2018, T-Mobile and Sprint announced that they had finally come to agreeable terms and will be joining forces as a single company. Rumors regarding a merger between these two carriers have been floating around for years, but no one thought it would ever happen.
Now that we're officially living in a T-Mobile + Sprint world, the wireless industry in the United States will likely be changing a lot over the coming months and years. It's still unclear if those changes will be for better or worse for consumers, but in the meantime, our Android Central forum users have plenty to say on the matter.
Here are some of the initial reactions to the merger announcement.
mogelijk04-29-2018 01:24 PM“I'd say not enough information yet, particularly if the FCC and FTC will let the deal go through -- though it is good Legere and Sievert will head the new company.
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hallux04-29-2018 02:34 PM“We've heard the same story before - "It'll be good for consumer", last time was with the Charter/Time Warner merger. As a customer impacted by that merger I can say it overall was BAD for the customer. Yes, we're now getting 100 Mb base internet speeds but I'm paying a higher bill and getting fewer TV channels as a result, and I was paying extra for upgraded download speeds compared to base...
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Nick Pirce04-29-2018 03:12 PM“Sprint and t-mobile merging together was a good business move
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Almeuit04-29-2018 05:08 PM“I can say they will have a serious amount of spectrum. I am sure that makes AT&T / Verizon worried.
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Even though we're still in the very early days of this deal, we'd love to hear from you – What are your thoughts on the T-Mobile and Sprint merger?
Join the conversation in the forums!
