Credit Monitoring Services, Are They Worth It?

Sure you can get a free credit report every year, but I'm not quite sure how effective it will be to find out something odd on your credit report up to a whole year after the fact. A lot of damage could already have been done. So, I went through the process of trying to find some "credit monitoring" or "credit protectors." Just to clarify, there are credit card protection services that will cover your debt should something happen, but have nothing to do with monitoring for fraud. Then there are credit card protect services that monitor for fraudulent activity. Be aware that some credit monitoring services only monitor for changes weekly, while others check daily. I looked some up: Citi Credit Monitoring 9.95/mo http://www.creditmonitoring.citi.com/index.asp?source=CMN00001 IdentityGuard http://www.identityguard.com/se/landing_se_fam.asp Amex CreditSecure https://www124.americanexpress.com/cards/loyalty.do?page=creditsecure You are in the best position to decide if credit monitoring services would be good for you. To learn more about the American Express Credit Aware Service, call our toll-free number 1-800-964-3594. I may consider something like Citi Credit Monitoring, but I'm still not sure if it's worth it. At almost $120/year, that's not cheap for credit monitoring, but should someone happen to try and steal your identity you would find out very quickly, and that would make $120/year seem like a steal. :) Are you using a credit monitoring service?