Credit Karma

Credit Karma is an ad-supported credit monitoring and financial tracking tool, provided by Intuit, the behemoth that also offers TurboTax. It tracks two of the 3 credit bureaus and provides timely email alerts on credit changes, helping you stay aware of any problems or mistakes. Because it's ad-supported, it's free to use, but your attention will be constantly monetized through financial product recommendations. Still, it's one of the easiest to use and time-savings credit monitoring products available.

Having a credit and identity tracking tool with good alerting capabilities can help you automate more of your money habits with less hands-on attention. You can monitor passively by following up on alerts or check in on Credit Karma every once in a while. Credit Karma monitors reports from two of the 3 national credit bureaus and will send you emails when your credit score changes.

As online security breaches and identity theft grew more common, more and more credit monitoring tools emerged. If you have a credit card, almost every major credit card company also offers some form of credit monitoring. So, now it's not uncommon to have access to multiple free tools that provide alerts on your credit status.

Credit Karma was founded in 2007 and quickly grew by offering free tools while earning revenue through advertisements to financial products. It successfully became a leader and even introduced free tax filing tools before getting acquired by Intuit in 2020.

If you don't have a credit monitoring tool of choice, and you don't have access to an equivalent reliable tool, Credit Karma's free service packs in a lot of value. The key reasons it's reviewed on Wayshaping are...

1. Reporting on 2 of the 3 credit bureaus for no fee. Included is Transunion and Equifax. Of course, the cost to you is dealing with advertisements and the potential that they get you to do something that's not right for your finances.
2. Non-intrusive email alerts and helpful reminders. Credit Karma puts effort into their emails, even when they are advertising. The reminders or alerts of security breaches have proven helpful over the long term.
3. Goes beyond ads with legitimately helpful resources. Even though Credit Karma makes its money through product suggestions and ads, they've packed the product with legitimately helpful resources. If you find yourself unemployed, for example, Credit Karma has state and federal resources listed on what kinds of aid you could be eligible for.