A new year is often a time that people reflect on past events and is also a great time to renew something in your life. Maybe that renewal or renovation is on your financial body or physical, now is a great of time as any to shed those extra things holding you down from being the best you possible.
Most people sit down and write out New Year's resolutions. Credit wise, what is on your list?
As a reminder, participation in these monthly checkins is optional & encouraged. The goal is to help keep you on track, so feel free to post your progress updates here. This is a no-judgement zone; feel free to say what's keeping you up at night or give yourself kudos for having it all together.
If you're a continuing myFICO fitness challenger: 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! Now that 2018 is behind us, 2019 can be positive moving forward provided we make the right decisions.
Stayed on the side lines and watched all the happenin's on MyFico. My scores reached 850 TU08 and have been in the 800's for five years now. After bottom feeding and graveling for well over ten years it was time. Did not pursue any new cards (tempted) as I wanted to max the FICO Score (a satisfaction after being on the bottom end - no specific real need otherwise). No guarantee that I may not strike while the iron is hot in 2019 if something tempts me? 
Credit goals for 2019:
Sit on my hands, get either EQ FICO 5 or TU FICO 4 over 740 (trying for both, I should get EQ I think) so that I can get back to the top tier for mortgage financing in case I move in 2020. No new accounts, pay off the residual debt, get as clean as possible for the next new year.
Tale of the tape from 2018:
So this past year wasn't a great one for me credit wise, though it did get much better near the end
Took a stupid 30D late (60D on TU, probably should've been an 60D on all 3 but small mercies in reporting idiosynracies) on a tradeline that didn't have autopay on it, recurring charge that apparently landed every 3 months from a service I would've sworn I'd unsubscribed from but oh well, it happened. Moral of the story, make sure any account I have supports autopay, everything else worked flawlessly when I had my head under a rock. Speaking of that time I wasn't working and as such ran up a bunch of revolving balances too.
Picked up one gig in August, then a second in early December, and making non-trivial progress on my debts now. Two incomes = zoom zoom, we'll see how long I can do that for, qualify of life is pretty low right now haha.
Then in late December that negative tradeline came off my Experian report, absolutely no idea why but given EX is the only bureau I care about for everything outside of a mortgage, yay! I'm literally right back where I started last year at on EX FICO 8, which after all that happened I find simply amazing.
Anyway with that sort of craziness my goal score planning was basically out the window, this year hopefully better for such analysis as my plans are just to sit on my hands in everything credit wise until next year (2020), and with that time I'll have my inquiries get excluded, my new car loan tick over a year which might help on some models, my HELOC will be paid off which should help my older scores, and my AAOA will finally cross 5 years if that's actually a thing... and a very, very good thing for me credit wise.
But the year over year comparison: once you get your credit built try not to take an oopsie just sayin' 
1/1/18 was no new accounts within a year and no inquiries, and scrupulously clean revolving utilization wise.
1/1/19 has 3 inquiries on EX, 2 on EQ, 0 on TU, and a new account from November (hi Tesla!), and non-trivial HELOC utilizatation (plus another 56% tradeline on TU but I doubt that's impacting much).
| FICO Model | 1/1/18 | 1/1/19 | Change |
| EQ FICO 8 | 809 | 755 | -54 |
| EQ FICO 8 AU | 824 | 758 | -66 |
| EQ FICO 8 BC | 830 | 772 | -58 |
| EQ FICO 5 | 771 | 730 | -41 |
| EQ FICO 5 AU | 780 | 730 | -50 |
| EQ FICO 5 BC | 780 | 744 | -36 |
| EQ FICO 9 | 802 | 787 | -15 |
| EQ FICO 9 AU | 810 | 798 | -12 |
| EQ FICO 9 BC | 813 | 798 | -15 |
| TU FICO 8 | 774 | 739 | -35 |
| TU FICO 8 AU | 795 | 759 | -36 |
| TU FICO 8 BC | 803 | 746 | -57 |
| TU FICO 4 | 741 | 731 | -10 |
| TU FICO 4 AU | 755 | 746 | -9 |
| TU FICO 4 BC | 773 | 728 | -45 |
| TU FICO 9 | 784 | 747 | -37 |
| TU FICO 9 AU | 801 | 748 | -53 |
| TU FICO 9 BC | 794 | 738 | -56 |
| EX FICO 8 | 822 | 822 | 0 |
| EX FICO 8 AU | 835 | 832 | -3 |
| EX FICO 8 BC | 854 | 852 | -2 |
| EX FICO 2 | 776 | 760 | -16 |
| EX FICO 2 AU | 784 | 752 | -32 |
| EX FICO 2 BC | 798 | 770 | -28 |
| EX FICO 3 | 757 | 724 | -33 |
| EX FICO 9 | 803 | 808 | 5 |
| EX FICO 9 AU | 811 | 816 | 5 |
| EX FICO 9 BC | 814 | 819 | 5 |
Happy New Year Garden Peeps!
Good Luck!
2018 I said I wanted to hit 750 across all 3 reports by mid 2019, I'm actually already very close to this goal, so I am going to see if I can't hit 775 instead.
Good Luck to all on whatever your goals are for this upcoming year, I wish you nothing but success.
Good Luck to all on whatever your goals are for this upcoming year, I wish you nothing but success.
