Discover started including customers’ FICO scores on monthly bills and on online accounts in early 2014. According to FICO numbers quoted by Discover, 87 percent of consumers’ credit scores fluctuate from month to month, with changes of as much as 20 points. These monthly credit scores can help customers receive real-time notification of any changes that could signal an error or abuse of their credit.

Start by doing a credit checkup — you can monitor your credit yourself by requesting a free report once a year from each of the credit bureaus through www.annualcreditreport.com but the free report won’t include your credit score, you’ll pay about $8 to get the credit bureau’s proprietary number.

Citi is another credit card that is offering free credit scores in the latest financial institution perks to give customers free credit scores through the FICO Open Access program, FICO announced, making it the largest participant in the program that will be available to more than 60 million consumers in 2015.

The Credit Score Simulator lets you see how various financial actions could affect your credit score over time, giving you a credit check for free. Using the Credit Score Simulator, your credit score is free and will not affect your credit score or the information in your credit report. These simulation tools are perfect to check “My Credit Score” — and there are no credit cards required to get your credit score check.

The credit bureaus are more than happy to charge you for your credit score, but you don’t need to pay if you know where to look. There are two major online companies right now which offer consumers a free credit score based on the information found in their credit reports. To be clear, these are not the FICO credit score, which is the industry standard. But the scores are based on the same data and should be a good representation of your FICO score.