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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 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!
(thought I'd post this a little early. )
Stayed the course on opening new accounts. Culled the credit card herd by six cards (closed three Visa, one Discover and a Kohl's and J.C. Penney) with a total reduction in credit of $50K+. While it works for my utilization my score dropped from 848 (300 to 850 using TU 08) to 824 and hasn't moved up. My goal solely for my own purposes is 850. No hot cards on my mind so I can stay the course in the garden. As an aside, while I was closing accounts I contacted my bank to see about re-allocating credit lines between credit products which triggered a manual financial review that lead to a reduction in my credit with them by $10K. They explained to me the US Government was reminding them they were to be establishing credit in conjunction with the ability to pay (my case had them over exposed). Yes, many myfico'ers have said "don't call the bank"!
I got a little bit off track during the summer and haven't been paying things down the way I wanted to. However, today I just made my last car payment and it feels awesome. This is the first car I ever paid for entirely by myself so I am excited to say that I own it! My goals for the next few months are to work on my smaller-balance cards and to not go into debt during the holiday season.
Been something of a strange couple of months from last update which often shows how little control I really have.
Lost my gig, so now mostly incomeless while doing the school thing; decided not to go take a side job, still on the fence for another couple of weeks as to whether I'm doing a 1 and done tour at school or if I take 2 years (at admitted additional expense) and get something beyond just the check mark for having a degree.
Did have a vetted renter pretty much fall into my lap, literally everyone in the transaction wins so if they do wind up interested after seeing the unused room, it's $750 / month I wouldn't have had otherwise and wasn't expecting for the next year or two.
This does draw a line in the sand for my credit file: couldn't support more applications even if I wanted them and currently I'm just tweaking my file rather than needing major changes as the plans have all been executed so the holding pattern is righteous anyway. As is, I don't think I'm going to get back to my goal of 700 on EQ Beacon 5 before the old lates get excluded and my tax lien falls off, seriously flatlined at 693, or 700 if I'm sans inquiries which isn't the case by New Years Day.
Anyway either for 1 year or 2 years sitting on my hands, that gets me to clean on 2/3 bureaus which is always a good idea and the third bureau might be effectively clean given how 30 day lates appear to be handled and it's age, so off we go on the ride to a 780ish!
Finally, taken long enough .
@Anonymous wrote:
Edit
Experian : Sept 593 : July 550
Equifax : Sept 575 : July 566
Transunion : Sept 582 : July 591
Very slow climb
Heck personally I'd be ecstatic about a 43 point increase in my EX over a 2 month period .
You're doing fine, I was about in the same situation score wise when I started and got to around 640 in a year which doesn't suck in today's market and that was just based new positive history in my case (nothing deleted, now 5 years later things are starting to fall off). That's when it gets to be a long slog heh, I've had no marked improvement in about 2 years now.
I haven't updated in three months but there hasn't been too much score movement in that time.
From June to now:
EQ : 759 -> 774 (+15)
TU: 704 -> 709 (+5)
EX: 735 -> 747 (+12)
Since June I've opened two new cards and gotten several CLIs which raises my total limit from 13.7K to 28.7K, which I still find hard to believe. Additionally, my reported utilization is now <9% and should remain that way. I'm super excited that my WF secured card is converting into unsecured so I'll be getting my $400 deposit back and keeping it open with them even though I won't use it much since I have better cards now.
I also got a PayPal $5K hidden credit limit which I'm taking advantage of for some hobby purchases and will have it paid off before the 0% APR six month promotion ends.
Overall, very happy with where I'm at. MY TU is being held back by my last medical collection but I'm leaving that alone for now and will just have to wait for my scores to slowly crawl higher.
Hi. It's been a while for me as well checking in. I got my free 3B fico report and everything looks good. I can't seem to get my scores to inch much higher the past couple of months. Most likely due to age of accounts. All I can do is sit back and wait.
I started this at the end of March at a 511. I hit 630 on June 1st, the highest being 638. I am being added to a couple accounts under 30% utilization as AU, hopefully that pushes me over 640. I seem to have plateaued. What did everyone here do when they reached that point?