My goals? To live financially sound and make better choices. Live within my means, and make credit work for me.
July 2013 score: EQ FICO 819, TU08 778, EX "806 lender pull 07/26/2013
Goal Score: All Scores 760+, Newest goal 800+
Take the myFICO Fitness Challenge
Current scores after adding $81K in CLs and 2 new cars since July 2013
EQ:809 TU 777 EX 790 Now it's just garden time!
June 2017 update: All scores over 820, just pure gardening now.
@youdontkillmoney wrote:To be able to buy the things I want/need, when I want to and credit is one way to do so and maintain a certain lifestyle the least expensive way possible while gaining as much value as possible, including rewards which make my purchase that much more less in cost. To be able to repeat this process, I pay my bills on time and often in full. This motivates me to keep my credit pristine since I was 18 without ever being late or missing any sort of bill.
Pretty much this.
I never cared about credit (always paid cash and always made a lot more than I spent anyway) until I realized I'd want to be a homeowner at some point, and preferably where I live now in S. Cali, and it's really tough for me to come up with the cash for any sort of reasonable house when we're talking 750k entry and that doesn't include yard... sub-optimal to say the least.
Hence, my initial and overarching goal: get a mortgage, at the lowest rate possible.
That's sort of dropped by the wayside but it holds true for everything else now in my life after I've realized what's possible through the use of credit that I simply wasn't getting previously. The comparitive cost of building good credit is cheap (albeit it takes a long time and in some cases some elbow grease) to the point of being trivial in compared to what can be accomplished by it... and as such, it's worth building and maintaining in the current market economy.
Just wanted to built a more robust financial profile.
A good question. What motivated me was an obsession to have a perfect FICO score and large credit limits. I liken it to my drive get a 4.0 GPA in college, which I did. When I first found myFICO, my scores were in the low 700's - good scores - but after reading these forums for a long time, I became interested in the "game" of it all and maximizing everything possible. There were a few 30 day lates that were four to five years old - I learned about and used GW letters and filing disputes. I didn't know that Freecreditreport.com wasn't a FICO score. Amex backdating was another important thing I learned. PIF before statement cut was another. The one thing I wished I learned about earlier was not to close old trade lines in good standing. Just before I signed up here, I closed three cards that were opened in the ealy 90's. There are so many things I've learned here that are too numerous to mention.
Anyway, today I can say I'm motivated to keep what I've accomplished; an 850 score on all three CRA's (FICO 08) and $286,000 in revolving credit. With a score of 850, I suppose I could get just about any card I wanted, but I don't need it, and don't want to jeopardize my scores with new accounts and inquiries. It seems as though I've won the "game", at least for a while. 
