Survey: Tracking Financial (and Other) Resolutions

Nudge, Nudge: Tracking Your Credit Score

When it comes to monitoring their own data, consumers are more likely to keep tabs on health and fitness data, like weight, sleep and step counts, than their credit, according to a recent Experian survey.

Question: How often do you check or measure the following?

About two-thirds of survey respondents said they track their physical activity like steps taken and how much sleep they’re getting on a monthly basis, or more frequently. But for financial matters, less than half (48%) check their credit score at least monthly. However, 61% of those under age 45 (largely millennials and Gen Z) check their credit score at least monthly, far more than the 41% of Generation X and baby boomers who keep monthly, or better, tabs on their credit score.

Tracking Your Progress Is Key to Success

Accountability is key to keeping resolutions on track. Studies indicate that those who write down their goals and set up a way to track progress are twice as likely to reach their goals. Big business has known this for a while now, putting into practice SMART goals, the famous acronym designed to help employees reach their specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound goals. Tracking SMART goals might be too much paperwork for the typical consumer, but finding a system for tracking your success in meeting your financial goals can pay off.

Fortunately, recent technological advances (chiefly access to smartphones) are giving individuals the power to measure many of their specific, achievable goals in 2024. Unfortunately for some resolution-makers, the effectiveness of tracking saving and spending with a financial smartphone app still lags behind fitness apps on those same devices. Steps and weigh-ins are more reliably trackable than spending from multiple accounts for your morning coffee and other ad-hoc purchases you might make throughout the day. And it’s at these micro-levels—counting steps, calories or pennies—that resolutions are often made or broken.

Regardless of their effectiveness, there’s clearly a lot of demand for some technological accountability in tracking fitness and finance goals. A November 2023 Forbes survey of consumers found that while improving finances tends to be a very popular resolution, the goal remains a runner-up to improving fitness in the new year.

Fitness and Finance Resolutions for 2024

The Bottom Line

Even though tracking your finances may not be as seamless as tracking mile splits with a smartwatch, financial planners and economists have been studying consumer savings behavior for years. In fact, behavioral economics may have already, imperceptibly, made a positive impact on how much most workers save for retirement today, by implementing automatic savings increases annually for many 401(k) and other workplace retirement savings plans.

And as far as credit is concerned, establishing a pattern of on-time payments is the best way to improve your scores. Those payments don’t all have to be debt payments, however. Experian Boosts allows users to add utility bills and other payments to their Experian credit report, which can improve their FICO Score, and perhaps help them reach a financial goal or two in 2024. Experian Boost has improved FICO Scores by an average of 13 points among users who saw a score increase.

The result that more people monitor their physical activity more frequently than their credit makes some sense: After all, most consumers’ credit scores won’t likely change as often as, say, their step count. Nor are all consumers in need of new credit in the short or intermediate term, which may cause them to check their credit score less often.