Its about time that I give you an update on my FICO score. In my first Score Watch post, I annotated some ups and downs that come with the initial stages of debt reduction.
It starts off really slow. When you're far in debt, the best financial decisions are not always the best credit score decisions. Sometimes its in your best interest to find a good balance transfer offer to help lighten the load of finance charges. That is rough on the FICO score. Make that two or three balance transfers and you can expect some turbulence. Don't be discouraged! Use that money you save to pay down the balances and things start to accelerate.
At the beginning of this graph I had over $19,000 in revolving debt, almost 90% credit utilization. Now I have less than $5,000 revolving on my credit cards (and about $3000 in a secured PTP Loan) which brings my credit utilization down to under 20%.
Last July I had something like 10 credit cards carrying a balance every month with APRs up to 30%. Now I carry a balance on 2 with APRs under 6% and I can take advantage of cashback rewards on a couple other cards because I pay them off each month.
My last post was written at the end of 'the plateau'. Months of chugging away and the score finally inches up a couple points. Well, five months later, I'm finally seeing that kind of results I've been waiting for. Check out the most recent Score Watch Alert and welcome me to the 700s!
Score Watch Alert (Your FICO Score Has Gone Up!)
0 Comments:
Post a Comment