Reviews

Free Credit Report from Credit Sesame – Scam or not?

I have always been very interested in my credit score and how to increase my credit rating.  For the last 3 years I have been paying for a credit report monitoring service that also gives me my score.  The price for this service is NOT cheap and I end up paying around $150  a year for this service.

Is Free Possible?

I heard about CreditSesame and thought I would check it out as they promise all the same services as my current pay service, but for free.   No recurring billing, no funny business.   They are able to do this by advertising offers to you based on your credit information.  It is a similar business model as Mint.com if you are familiar with their site.

My Test…

I decided to sign up for the site and go over all the steps and my opinion of the site for my readers to see if it would be useful.

First, when you first get to the site you arrive at a “Landing Page” where you are asked to input your name, email, state and zip code.

Next you are asked to sign up for your account and enter a password.  After you complete the registration process the site WILL ask you for your social security number.  Many people, me included, are very guarded about releasing there SSN on the internet.  I checked on this site and it has a valid SSL certificate so all of your data is encrypted when sent.  I put in my SSN and continued though the process.

At this point you will be asked a few security questions to verify your identity and and then you will be given access to your credit score and some other recommendations on how to save money based on their analysis.   My advise is to use the site to get your credit score and then make your own decisions on what other financial products you need.

Creditsesame.com gets paid when you sign up for one of the products that they recommend so make sure you do your homework before you signup for any new financial products.  You can see that I have an OK credit score from the picture below and I didn’t have to put in a creditcard anytime during the process.

What I like…

• No credit card required
• You get your Experian credit report and score for free and Updates every month
• Easy signup process

What I don’t Like…

• No monitoring included
• Only receive credit report from one agency
• They try to sell you on other financial product (but hey, this is how they can do it for free).

Overall, I am pretty impressed and if you don’t know what your current credit score or report looks like, it is probably worth checking it out.  Please let me know if you have any questions and I will try to answer them the best I can!

Creating a Food Stash – Is Your Family Prepared?

I was contacted by the people at  www.efoodsoffer.com yesterday and they wanted to know if I would be willing to do a review on their products for the blog.  I have actually been thinking a lot about creating a food stash for our family lately, so I enthusiastically agreed.

First off, I had never heard of this company before they contacted me and have not seen or tasted any of their products.  After inspecting their website they apear to have a nicely organized site with a good amount of useful information.

After I receive the samples I will try some of the meals and give a full review.  So, watch out for this in the next couple weeks.

Incase. / Foter