You’ll often hear that credit monitoring services (CMS) aren’t worth the expense. After all, with free access to credit reports from the three credit reporting companies, you have every opportunity to monitor your own credit. Plus, there’s not much these services can or will do to prevent an occurrence of fraud or identity theft. So, for many people, they may not provide a sufficient value. But, if you’re in a position where you need to stay on top of your credit (i.e. preparing to qualify for a home loan, repairing your credit), credit monitoring services can be an extremely good value.

Here are five reasons why you should consider using a credit monitoring service:

• Credit activities that affect your credit occur all the time. You may only be able to review your report three times a year. Credit monitoring services track and report activities daily, weekly or monthly.
• CMS will help you focus on the changes that occur that impact your credit score, saving you time and frustration in deciphering all the data.
• Credit monitoring services can translate the data of the three credit reports into a universal language that you can more clearly understand.
• While they can’t prevent identity theft, you are likely to find out much more quickly using CMS than if you were to wait for a statement or a credit report.
• If improving your credit score in important to you, CMS may be a bargain at $10 or $20 a month, versus the cost of higher interest expenses or an act of fraud that isn’t detected right away.