I used to be big fans of Credit Karma and TrueBill but both have sold out to companies I really dislike (essentially the Intuit family of companies). I really dislike Intuit lobbying the US government to keep taxes complicated as well as their mediocre software.
I tried Monarch but it didn’t really help me at all; it felt very incomplete. As for credit monitoring I know just about every bank offers gimmicky services but I’d like to avoid those if possible (don’t even get me started on personal banking).
AFAIK freezing your credit doesn’t stop it from building up.
Oh I see, essentially you’re just locking access to it. I looked it up because I didn’t really know what I was talking about.