Isn't it good that when you wake up from hibernation, everything in the world is better?

A good portion of personal finance planning is about credit management, and that usually involves you keep track of your credit report and credit score, so as to maintain a good credit record that might help you when you apply for the next mortgage, car loan or credit card.

Three years ago, the new FTC legislature requires each of the "big three" credit agencies to provide a free credit report to everyone once every year. If you haven't tried that yet, go to https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ and order yours. If you space out your retrieval carefully, you can get one free report every four months.

But that will only give you the credit report for free. Credit score is still something you normally have to pay for. Now, it seems that the advertising-supported business model is hitting this corner of the world too ... introducing CreditKarma.com, where you can get unlimited flow of your latest credit score on demand for free.

To sign up at CreditKarma.com, you will have to provide some key information, then answer a few questions about yourself so you can identify yourself to the system. Within minutes, you can get your credit score, and you can refresh it every month. I have been using the service for four months now, and check out the trend of my credit score:

And my credit score of 766 sits nicely in the top quintile:

How does CreditKarma.com make money? Yes, it is an advertising supported model. CreditKarma matches your credit profile with a long list of financial services offers like mortgage, credit card and banking accounts. The last time I check, it even offers cable and mobile deals.

An incomplete snapshot of what's offered to me:

Now I have respective CreditKarma accounts set up for my wife and myself. Isn't it good that we don't have to pay for credit score any more?