Q: I was impressed by your review of the various credit reporting services, but also a little confused by all the choices. Maybe you can help me. My primary concern is to check my FICO score on a regular basis (say, monthly) — which service would be best for me?

A: If your primary goal is to monitor changes in your FICO score then we believe that myFICO is the best credit report service for you. However, if you want some of the additional benefits that people typically associate with credit report monitoring services, such as on demand access to credit report data and credit report monitoring, you may want to consider a service like CreditCheck Total.

MyFICO will provide you with two free score power reports each year which include your up-to-date FICO score. They will also provide you with an updated FICO score anytime there is a change to your credit file. This will ensure that you always know how changes in your credit report are impacting your FICO score.

There are some limitations to MyFICO in that they only monitor your Equifax credit report. Since all three of your credit reports, including Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, can differ from each other you won't necessarily have direct access to all the information that could be impacting how lenders view your creditworthiness. Additionally, MyFICO only gives you two reports a year while some other services allow you to access data at any time.

CreditCheck Total, for example, will give you access to all three credit reports and all three credit scores on demand. This doesn't include FICO scores, but will still give you a good indication of how you overall credit health is trending. CreditCheck Total also has the added benefit of helping protect you from identity theft by monitoring all three of your credit reports for changes.

The trade off with CreditCheck Total is that you won't have access to the FICO score data you are most interested in receiving on a frequent basis. CreditCheck Total also has a more expensive monthly fee at $19.95 versus MyFICO's $7.50

The good news is that both MyFICO and CreditCheck Total offer a free trial of 30 and 7 days respectively. So, you could try each out and decide which is right for you.

You can also learn more by visiting our full comparison of credit report monitoring services.

FICO is a household name that is synonymous with credit scores, particularly to anyone that has ever applied for a home loan, auto loan or credit card. FICO estimates that 90% of major banks use their scoring methodology to analyze the credit worthiness of consumers.

The new FICO score, officially called FICO 08, was created to more accurately predict the credit risk of an individual. It will be more lenient on people who may have had a few credit slip ups in the past but otherwise have had fairly responsible credit practices and much more harsh on those who repeatedly make credit mistakes.

FICO provided these very helpful examples of how the new FICO 08 score may impact different types of people based off of their credit history.

This is great news for consumers that are actively working to improve their credit and adopting healthy credit habits and even more reason for those people that have habitually poor credit to take moves to improve.

The FICO 08 score also makes it extremely important to have a full grasp on the contents of your credit report as inaccuracies could cost you once the new formula begins calculating scores. The simplest and most effective way to get a full grasp of your current credit profile is to sign up for a credit report monitoring service. These services will give you access to your credit report, credit score and alert you to any changes on your credit report.

All of the credit bureaus, including Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, provide these services and we have reviewed and compared all these credit report monitoring services for the benefit of our readers.

These sites have domain names very similar to those of the credit bureaus. For example, freecreditrepotrt.com may accidentally be reached by consumers that are attempting to visit Experian's FreeCreditReport.com. While most of these sites likely pose little threat to consumers, it is still important to be fully aware who is operating the website you are visiting before you engage in any business dealings.

One simple way to ensure that you are on the website you intend to be is to check the privacy policy and/or contact us links which are typically at the bottom of the web page. If these items aren't present or seem suspicious, it is a good idea to move along.

We here at NextAdvisor deal directly with all the major credit report monitoring services and make sure that all links on our site are valid and directing to reputable service providers. You can click on any of the links below to visit the official websites of each of the credit report monitoring services that we have reviewed:

• Identity Guard
• Equifax
• ProtectMyId by Experian
• MyFICO
• FreeCreditReport.com
• TrueCredit 3 Bureau
• Transunion