I know you are all hard at work with your credit goals. Have you progressed as far as you hoped? Were there any unforseen expenses that cropped up and may have thrown you off schedule?
As a reminder, participation in these monthly checkins is optional, but encouraged. The goal is to help keep you on track, so feel free to post your progress updates here. This is a no-judge zone; feel free to say what's keeping you up at night or give yourself a kudo for having it all together.
Did you hit any potholes or speedbumps? Achieve some milestones, either small or mighty? Change your goals or add new ones?
Let us know how you're doing!
Everything is going well so far since I started my journey to repair my credit. I didn't have severely bad credit but it needed some work. At least I thought so. My high card balances, misses payment and one collection account was hurting me. I've been paying on time for the pass 1 yrs. The main reason I needed to get my credit in order was to purchase a home. I’ve been paying someone else mortgage for 10yrs. Fast forward since 4/22/17. I was able to get a pre-qualification letter. This enables me to sign a contract to build my first home. After sitting down with a Mortgage Broker/Financial Adviser and this site my score continues to rise. My tentative closing date is 15 February 2018. I’m praying that everything falls in to place. This gives me time to pay down my credit card balances more.
FICO8 04/22/17 EQ612 TU644 EX622
FICO8 10/22/17 EQ665 TU692 EX679
FICO 5, 4 & 2 04/22/17 (529, 642, 600)
FICO 5, 4 & 2 10/22/17 (631, 654, 640)
Here are my updates for November:
1). To garden the cards I got last year post-BK, letting those tradelines age and grow. without opening any new tradelines. I've been in the garden since 9/7/17, and still going strong. 
Almost forgot, I finally was able to close my original Cap1 QS Platinum and combine the limit into my QS WEMC. Feels good to prune a starter card!
2). To continue to manage utilization and reported balances. Currently 27.2%.
3). To watch my inquiries drop. EQ 5, TU 9, EX 11, all within the last two years. All inquiries are post-BK. On January 1, inquiries less than one year old will be EQ 2, TU 5, EX 7.
4). To pay an extra $100/month on my highest balance and highest interest student loan, which is upside down due to interest accruing while in deferment (I know I should have paid it as I went, but the BK and events leading up to didn't allow for that). Still putting $100 per month extra toward my highest student loan balance. When I started putting the extra $100 per month, it was at 102.67%, now down to 97.58%. High utilization was 116.89% right after I filed BK, and capitalized interest hit (it had been in deferment until then). I honestly didn't realize how far I'd already brought it down just making the regular payments.
5). To continue saving about 10% of my gross income each month.Still going strong, saving 12.7% of my gross income each month! Gotta love direct deposit into an online savings account. Makes it easy!
Would still like to see one or more of my scores hit 700 by the end of the year at least. BK two year anniversary is November , so I'm not gonna make 700, but I hope to by the middle of next year, being in the garden.
Current scores at November check in:
EQ 681, TU 650, EX 687
So, I started this month with pretty decent scores. But, it was definitely time to get myself a car. I've been without one since 5/24/17, when it was totalled. I bought my daugter a car back in July so, I thought I'd better hold out for as long as possible to get mine. I felt pretty confident with all of my scores being over 720, which is top tier with Lexus. So, I leased my car a couple days ago.
Then, I thought I'd better app for the cards that I want before the dealership inquiries hit. I actually only got 2 inquiries but, I expected more since my daughter's car purchase hit me with 10+. So, I app'd and received:
Ameriprise Platinum AMEX
AMEX PRG
AMEX BCP $1000
NFCU AMEX $15,000
Discover It Cash $1000
and CLI on my NFCU Signature Cash Rewards from $7000 to $14000
I am officially headed to the garden to hide while the dust settles on all of that activity.
So far, my Equifax and Experian scores have both dropped 8 points. Not bad. But, that's so far.
My goal last month was to get my scores to 760. I did that with EQ and close with TU but, now, my goal for this month is to garden, hope the fallout doesn't set me back too much and that I can rebound.
Another late reply to the thread (life has been awkward and strange) but things are still fine.
Have recently made the decision to close (almost) anything that doesn't support autopay or have a robust notification system (JCB as one such example); I wasn't really using the account for much anyway so it doesn't really matter. Planning to keep the DCU secured card but I can fix their notification system JCB's in the running for most user unfriendly interface on the planet for their USA division: bye Felicia.
Beyond that, managed to reach 90.06% on one of my smaller limits for a downpayment on dental work, took a small ding on that but it'll get fixed next month. Prettying up for my January annual 3B pull.
Couple inquiries coming off in December from EX, then I have the one remaining inquiry on EQ from January and my last opened account also transitions over a year at that point, and that's it besides random balances for things that I can control with regards to improving my credit in the near term (a CFA falls off in 2022, silly mistake when rebuilding) and beyond that it's just the usual: pay on time, always at least the minimum, every time... so just putting it on autopilot as much as possible and focusing on other areas of my life instead.
Hope everything is going well for all of you as well!
