The best personal finance apps help you manage and grow your money in different ways and handle your debt responsibly. The free app WalletHub concentrates on the latter. It’s a credit-shopping site that tries to match you up with financial products like credit cards that might benefit you, but it devotes at least as much space to tools and other content that helps you analyze, monitor, and improve your debt profile. WalletHub's staff researches financial products, such as credit cards and loans, and they share what they learn in reviews and other editorial coverage. This education content is WalletHub's most significant strength.
While WalletHub is good at what it does, it doesn't help you with budgeting, tracking your expenses, or other personal finance matters. You need another app for that. Our Editors' Choice winner among personal finance apps is Simplifi by Quicken. It's better if you need a comprehensive personal finance app. If you only need help with your credit score and report, however, WalletHub is very good. Plus, it's free.
What Is a Credit Score?
Your credit score tells potential lenders how safe it is for you to borrow money from them based on your existing payment history and other factors. If you have at least one credit account reporting to one of the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion), typically for at least six months, you have a credit score. The score ranges from 300 to 850. The higher the number, the better. WalletHub shows you your credit score when you first log into the app.
It's not just credit card issuers and other lenders that may be interested in your credit score. It could be a potential landlord or employer. Most often, though, you have your credit score pulled when you’re applying for a loan, like a mortgage or a car.
You should want to see your own credit score a few times every month, so you can spot any possible fraud early. An unexpected change in your credit score could mean someone is taking out lines of credit in your name.
(Credit: WalletHub/PCMag)What Information Does WalletHub Need From You?
To create a WalletHub account, you don’t have to provide much. You give your full name and email address, set a password, add your address, and go through the site’s security paces (more on that later). Then you have to hand over your date of birth and the last four digits of your social security number. That’s it, initially. WalletHub then pulls your most recent credit report so it knows what credit cards and other loans you have. You immediately get a lot of feedback, including your current credit score, according to TransUnion. Creditors update TransUnion about once a month.
Is WalletHub Safe to Use?
WalletHub checks all the most important boxes when it comes to security. It uses the same 128-bit encryption and SSL FDIC-insured financial institutions use. It supports multi-factor authentication (MFA). Your personal data collected at signup is anonymized once it's stored. Plus, the registration process requires only the last four digits of your social security number, not the whole thing. WalletHub could do more, though, like Credit Sesame does by asking questions about your credit history.
What Can You Learn About Your Credit From WalletHub?
Here are some of the things WalletHub tells you about your credit:
Your current credit score: WalletHub updates your credit score from TransUnion daily and tells you whether it’s gone up or down.
Your credit report: WalletHub also supplies your credit report from TransUnion. It shows your payment history for every financial account and additional details like the date the account was opened, credit limit, and highest balance. Your credit report page also tells you whether each account has gone into collections or been the subject of a credit inquiry or public record. If anything is inaccurate, you can contact TransUnion to report it.
Unusual activity in your credit: A credit timeline displays a list of events connected to your credit cards, like an unusual increase in your balance, a payoff, or an account closure. You can request text message notifications of activity that WalletHub discovers with its 24/7 credit monitoring.
Credit profiles: WalletHub monitors your accounts to help you find credit products that can save you money. To do this, it needs information from you about each card you have, like any membership fees you pay, the regular APR, and your rewards status. It also estimates the impact on your credit score if you were to miss the next payment or close the account, for example.
How Does WalletHub Decide Which Offers to Show You?
The more you tell WalletHub about yourself, the better your chances are of seeing credit card and loan offers that match your needs and goals. To make good suggestions, WalletHub takes into consideration the data from your profile, assumptions it makes about you, information from the product terms, and the likelihood of your approval. Even if WalletHub recommends a credit card to you, it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get approved for it. Competitor Credit Karma does you one better. For some offers, it pays you $50 if you don’t get approved for a credit card it recommends.
If you're both working to improve your credit and are in need of a new credit card or loan, WalletHub's personally targeted offers can be extremely helpful.
(Credit: WalletHub/PCMag)How Does WalletHub Help You Analyze Your Credit?
WalletHub offers tools that can help you zero in on current problems with your credit score and avoid future ones. It lays out the criteria that credit card companies use to compile your credit score, including payment history, credit utilization, debt load, and account diversity. Some of these factors carry more weight in credit scores than others.
You can also run a simulation that estimates what would happen if you took action in any of four areas:
Opening or closing accounts or making inquiries (which happens when you apply for a new financial product).
Making or missing payments.
Changing your account balance or credit limit.
Filing for bankruptcy or going to collections.
WalletHub also tells you how your credit score compares to other Americans', as well as other residents of your state, your age group, and your income bracket. I haven’t seen these comparisons in any other personal finance app.
(Credit: WalletHub/PCMag)Unique Features in WalletHub: Debt Payoff Tool and WalletScore
WalletHub offers some data and tools not offered by competitors. For example, its Debt Payoff tool creates a payment plan to help you get out of debt. You enter the interest rate and balance for each of your credit cards and loans that you want to include. You can exclude any accounts that you pay off in full each month or those with low balances. The DebtPayoff tool then asks how much you can afford to pay every month and figures out how much you should put toward each account in a way that will get you out of debt faster—and cheaper.
Another unique feature is WalletHub's WalletScore, and it's a mixed bag. It gives you a score based on your credit, spending, emergency preparedness, and retirement funds, and makes recommendations about how you can improve it. While the WalletScore can be an effective springboard to more serious, detailed financial planning, it shouldn’t be taken as a definitive analysis of your financial outlook.
WalletHub offers a lot of other educational content related to personal finance, too, including numerous related articles and studies. There’s a financial literacy test and more calculators than I've seen in any other personal finance app, as well as searchable directories of companies like credit unions and financial advisors, which no one else has. But it's not the very best. That distinction goes to NerdWallet, which has the highest quality and quantity of financial education content I've seen.
Overall, NerdWallet does more than WalletHub. In addition to letting you check your credit score and report, NerdWallet shows you your net worth and cash flow by connecting to your bank accounts and credit cards and importing all your financial transactions. It provides a more comprehensive recap of your personal finances than WalletHub.
(Credit: WalletHub)That said, WalletHub’s reviews of financial products are more thorough than what you get from any other personal finance app. Besides providing the basic specs for each offering, like any annual fees and the APR, there are reviews written by WalletHub staff, a lengthy Q&A, and customer reviews, sometimes thousands of them. WalletHub has a great deal of community and staff support, more than other personal finance apps.
Should You Use WalletHub?
If you need an app to quickly check your credit score, see why it is what it is and learn how to improve it, or shop around for recommended financial products, WalletHub is a good option. It displays your credit score prominently, shows you targeted products, and delivers profiles of your own debt accounts. WalletHub also has a surprising amount of additional editorial content, like reviews and thorough profiles of financial products, though NerdWallet has more.
If you need a more comprehensive personal finance app, try Editors' Choice winner Simplifi by Quicken instead. WalletHub does an excellent job of helping you take care of a few specific financial chores, but Simplifi does more for those who need to make a budget, track income and expenses, and manage their money in other ways.
