Don’t be Quizzled by Quizzle

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Properly managing your money is just as important now as it’s ever been and the number of money managing sites continues to grow each day.  

Quizzle.com, a website designed to help consumers value their homes, better manage their budgets and offer a free credit report and score twice a year has been around for a couple of years now and doesn’t get nearly enough praise for the tools available to consumers.   Considering all of the available options in monitoring your credit and managing your finances, Quizzle has done a fantastic job in separating itself from the competition.  So what makes Quizzle so awesome?

Free Credit Score and Report

Finding a free credit report and score outside of AnnualCreditReport.com is a rare thing these days.  Sites like FreeCreditReport.com, TrueCredit.com and CreditReport.com offer subscribers the ability to view their credit report and score if they sign-up for a free trial. But if you fail to cancel inside of the free-trial period, your credit card is going to be charged.  Quizzle doesn’t ask for a credit card or any kind of payment information. And believe it or not, they don’t even ask for your social security number!  After filing out a few standard personal questions (Address, Phone Number, etc.), then confirming your identity, your credit report and score from Experian is ready for review.

In addition to the credit report and score, Quizzle provides a credit grade and the ability to help you improve your credit score.  Offering credit reports and scores for free doesn’t help company revenue much, so one of the paid services that Quizzle provides is having a professional recommend certain steps to help you raise your credit score.  You don’t have to use this service to access your credit information, but available if you need it.

Money Center

Another excellent feature that Quizzle provides lies within its money center, where users can evaluate their financial responsibilities.  There are two main areas in which Quizzle can help you plan:

1. Your Budget – Categories like insurance, daily living expenses, luxuries, utilities and more can be entered with a few simple clicks to give you a better idea of just how much you are spending each month.  Also provided is your debt to income ratio and your available cash on hand, to help you better manage your day-to-day expenses. Some of the information is automatically provided based on your credit report, which is pretty neat.
2. Rainy Day Fund -  Not that it’s rocket science, but knowing what you have set aside in case of emergency is important.  Quizzle notes a proper rainy day fund as 4 months salary saved in your bank account, so the made up numbers below won’t quite cut it.  Again, Quizzle offers help in planning for a better rainy day fund, if you so desire.

 

Home Center

The third and most informative area of your Quizzle account is found under the “My Home” tab where you have access to:

• Home Affordability Calculator: If you’re thinking about purchasing a home in the near future, Quizzle definitely has the tools to help you make the right decision.  Based on your current debt, income and credit report and the down-payment you are willing to provide, Quizzle can recommend how affordable a home is to you.
• Mortgage Recommendations: Unsure on how a mortgage will impact your finances?  Quizzle reviews the time period of your possible mortgage as well as the interest rate and down payment to let you know just how much you will be “in” for.  If you currently own a home, you can leverage your current home value against your potential new mortgage.
• Homes Sold in Your Area: There’s no better way to determine the value of your home by looking at what others around you have sold for.  With a simple Google maps application, you can see the purchase price of any home sold within your zip code.
• Your Neighborhood: Based on the zip code you enter, you are giving a large amount of data pertaining to the demographics of your area.  Topics like race, ethnicity, crime and housing averages are some of the statistics that you’ll find in this section.

Here’s a snapshot of Quizzle’s Home Center:

 

Through its list of high quality partners, (Quicken, Cleveland Cavaliers, Fathead etc.) Quizzle.com is able to keep everything free for its users. Bottom line is that Quizzle has an extremely user-friendly interface and is the only site on this planet that provides a truly free credit score and report without having to submit your social security number.  The additional features of budget and mortgage help make them a one-stop shop to manage your finances, without having to worry about canceling any memberships, or being up-sold at every turn.  Being able to pull your credit report twice a year instead of once is a nice cherry on top.

Published or updated February 15, 2012.