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Transunion is charging to place a credit freeze on your file. The charges to add, lift, or remove a credit freeze vary by state and can be found here. Some states even have differing charges based on your age. Here’s an idea. Make them free…But if they were free, it would hurt TransUnion’s business model.  We wouldn’t want to hurt a credit reporting agency’s business model in an effort to help consumers against fraud, would we?

Okay, so this doesn’t improve your score directly, but there are benefits. Freezing your credit report with Experian will keep your Experian score from going down due to hard inquiries when applying for credit.

So, you want to apply for some credit cards, or otherwise initiate a bunch of hard pulls on your credit report, but are worried about the consequences of hard inquiries staying on your credit report or a dip on your FICO score. You already know about bumpage, accelerated bumpage, and choppage, so you’re not too worried about your Equifax or Transunion scores being hurt. What about your Experian score? (Remember, bumpage doesn’t work with Experian.) Just freeze your credit report with Experian. The hard pull that would otherwise be on Experian will likely redirected to a different credit reporting agency (CRA) – either Transunion or Equifax. The risk being run is that the institution trying to pull the Experian report will decide not to pull from a CRA, and a denial letter will be sent. I’m not too worried about getting denied credit – if my score stays in tact. Don’t forget, if you really want to, you can “thaw” your credit report temporarily, or remove the freeze altogether.

Clark Howard has a good guide on freezing your credit report with links to the various CRA’s websites. The cost is $3-$10 per bureau to freeze, and a cost to thaw per bureau of $0-$10.

If you’re already using the ‘bumping‘ strategy of pulling your credit report regularly to eliminate hard inquiries, then you may have noticed this process takes a LONG time. It can take three months to see any results from pulling your credit report once a day.

Why not pull several times a day? All it takes is using multiple services to pull your credit score daily, and you can bump your hard inquiries in a fraction of the time. Here is a list of credit monitoring services that allow daily pulls:

• Service…………………………………………………..Pulls from………………………….Cost
• National City Identity Protect ………………..(Pulls all 3 bureaus)……………..$9/month
• Credit Karma ………………………………………(Pulls Trans Union only)………..Free
• Privacy Matters 123 …………………………….(Pulls all 3 bureaus)………………$30/year
• Truecredit ………………………………………….(Pulls all 3 bureaus)……………..$15/month

This list is not comprehensive, and is subject to change, but you get the idea, for about $55, you can remove hard inquiries from your credit report in 30 days or less.  Again, this does not work with Experian, but does work with Trans Union and Equifax.

Viva la bumpage.

A few days ago, when I was talking about bumping hard inquiries off your credit report, I mentioned choppage. Choppage is when soft inquiries are cut off of your credit report (usually in a large block). The soft inquiries are good, because they fill the spaces of your hard inquiries. So, you can see why choppage can harm your efforts to bump hard inquiries.

Choppage typically happens when there is a long line of identical pulls on your credit report. So, if you’ve been using national city, like mentioned in the bumpage post, and you have 60 days worth of pulls with nothing in between, your credit file may get chopped.

One potential way to avoid a chopped credit profile (and speed up the bumping process) is to pull from a few sources. CreditKarma pulls Trans Union, you can update daily, and best of all, its free. Truecredit.com allows daily pulls (all 3 bureaus), and is $15/month. Privacymatters123 allows daily pulls (all 3 bureaus), and is $30/year.

Probably the best way to avoid choppage is to take a break from pulling your credit report every once in a while.

ING Direct is one of my favorite banks becaues of the free ACH transfers, relatively high rates, and ease of use. It also has a very low instance of account fraud – an important aspect of any online bank.

I have lots of bank accounts because I keep my eye out for low hanging fruit like account opening bonuses. In 2008, I earned $1000+ in account opening bonuses.  Here’s one for you:

ING Direct Electric Orange $50 Bonus

As always, be familiar with the fine print, and enter reference code EM287 when prompted for the $50. If you don’t already have an ING direct savings account, you’ll need to open one first.

1. Click ‘Apply Now’
2. Open your Electric Orange
3. Activate your Electric Orange MasterCard® Debit Card
4. Use your Electric Orange Card to make at least 3 signature-based purchases in the first 45 days after your account has been opened
5. Your $50 bonus will be automatically deposited into your Electric Orange 50 days after your account has been opened

Beware: This will result in a hard pull on your credit report. Also read my post: ‘Bumping Hard Inquiries’

Remember that car you were thinking about buying? Credit inquiry. New cell phone? Credit inquiry. What about that store credit card to get a lousy 10% off? Credit inquiry.

Soft inquiries (inquries you initiate not for credit)  such as pulling your credit report do not harm your score. Credit inquiries resulting from you requesting credit hurt your score. These are “hard inquiries” and most people think they won’t go away until they naturally fall off your credit report (2 years by law). There is a way to get the inquries off sooner.

Each credit reporting agency (CRA) such as Equifax (EQ) Trans Union (TU) or Experian (EX) has slots in wich they put your inquiries, hard or soft. Basically bumpage is filling all the slots for credit inquries with soft inquiries. The new soft inquiries “bump” off the hard inquiries and raise your credit score.  NOTE: This will not work with Experian.

Don’t worry if you only have a couple of hard inquiries on your report. Use bumpage if you have MANY inquiries you’d like to get off relatively soon. If you pull every day, it should take about 90 days to bump your hard inquiries. It takes a little determination, but 90 days is a lot better than two years. I used this tactic after my App-O-Rama (signed up for 20-30 credit cards at once for 0% offers and bonuses), and healed my score in short order.

A cheap way to pull your credit report is using National City Identity Protect. They allow one pull every 24 hours.

Watch out for “choppage” and “splittage.” They’re beyond the scope of what we’re talking about here, but learn more by reading this post.