A truly free way to track your credit score

To me, a credit score is an intangible, flighty thing. It lives somewhere far off from me, and I don't often think of it. Being a very-low income single parent for over a decade now, credit isn't something high on my priority list. Just paying the day-to-day bills is enough, thank you very much. I don't need extra temptation to live beyond our means - there were months that mere necessity was beyond our means.

These days, thanks to my wonderful guy being a second adult in the house, finances are a little bit more stable. I'm starting to think about hopeful things, like maybe someday buying a house. I'm doing my best to put things in order so perhaps some day, we actually can.

Signing up for one of those credit monitoring services so I can watch the changes would be interesting, and possibly reassuring, but it isn't in the budget, nor will it be anytime soon. I've never known my credit score, the yearly free credit reports have been sufficient for me to keep track of things, but I've always been curious.

I discovered something neat today. Credit Karma enables you to update your credit score monthly, and makes suggestions of ways to improve it, all for free. They use on-site advertising to pay the costs of retrieving your credit score for you, and it's a "soft-pull", so it has no effect on your credit report or score. The site is highly secured like a bank, and seems like it will be a wonderful tool to help keep track of things, at the best price possible.