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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 check-ins 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!
Checking in for February. I just did a last post on Jan. but need to post here too. Probably need to post daily to keep the goal fresh in my mind but once a month will suffice. This month my goal is to stay on top of report dates, due dates, and utilise these new cards to benefit our wallet and scores to the best possible way. I'm not sure exactly what is best but I'm starting to figure it all out. I'm in the Garden, that's priority one, building patience, knowledge, and waiting for the cli's to start rolling in, hahaha, maybe trickle in is priority two.....but that's okay, 6 months ago I had the credit of a turd so today I can say, I stink less.
Checking in for February. Decided to take out a 401K loan to pay off my AMEX and its 29.99% (!!!) interest rate last month. In doing so reduced my overall utilization by 7% and monthly payments by $200+. This will be a LONG journey but at least it is off to a good start. Should be able to make another good dent this month with my tax return. Struggling a bit with whether I should pay off the accounts with the highest interest rate first (saves the most money) or get all cards below 69% (FICO score bump). But I have plenty of time to figure that out as those are the same right now...
Goal updates for 2019.
1. Maxing out 2018 IRA. (~1500 remaining) ~100 remaining
2. Max out 2019 IRA. (6k)
3. Get my emergency savings where I want (~2k more) ~100 more
4. Save enough extra to max 2020 IRA on Jan 1, 2020. (6k) Continue to try to hit max IRA on day 1 into the future.
5. No additional cards in 2019. (0% AMEX BCE thru 2019) Good Here
6. Continue PIF statement balance on all cards except 0% rates.Good Here
7. Dispute 1 HP that was fraudulent and dispute lates from student loans that I received forbearances during the timeframe of lates.
8. Get my net worth to be a non-negative number. (have never been positive since college)
I've been plugging along.
I did everything in January that I had planned (I've been spacing out my credit report repairs and updates and other things), and I even got my Taxes and car tax & reg done early (usually I do all of that in March).
One of my derogs, set to fall off of my report in September magically disappeared from EX, so I was happy for that.
I hit my goal to have my student loan (consolidated) down to <88% by Feb.
Jan 31, I had some inquries become unscorable.
Feb 6, the next two inquiries fall off of EQ (everyone and their kitten hits EQ for me).
I plan on joining NFCU this month (just to establish a relationship with them).
I had cards prequal with USBank on 2/1 (yay! I have a secured card with them and was using that as a barometer to guess at whether I might be able to graduate it this year).
I only had two unexpected issues this past month:
1. Equifax decided to put an extended fraud alert on my report (and thereby all of my reports). I know why they did it, but I did not ask or apply for it, so I have sent letters to the big three to have it removed (TU has complied so far) and
2. My goal was to pay down my student loan 10k this year and have a positive net worth, but my car is in the shop and there's a non-zero chance I'll be buying a new car (it's 13 years old and I love it, but I'm not going to pour money into it).
@calyx wrote:
(everyone and their kitten hits EQ for me).
LOL! I hear ya, that just hit me funny kutgw
@GApeachy wrote:
@calyx wrote:
(everyone and their kitten hits EQ for me).LOL! I hear ya, that just hit me funny kutgw
It drives me nuts! All accounts pull EQ and if I'm lucky, double pull EQ and EX. At least Transunion is 'clean' (for no good reason )
I am extremely surprised how my score has continued to go up, even after checking to see if I would qualify for a mortgage. My scores have slightly gone up and I have been pre-approved for a mortgage up to $559,000!!! Living in California is great, but housing prices suck!