To be honest, Survival needs a good reset. 1.9 offers a plethora of new features, new blocks and new combat. The current Survival reset has been up for 6+ months already, which is extremely long. However, plugins and such that run on Snapcraft will need to be updated to 1.9 as a whole, meaning that a reset won't be happening for a while.
Keeping personal items and money would be an interesting concept, however it would take a while to sort out (from what I can tell) and it's worth moving on. 'New update, new you' sort of thing.