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If you're not charging anything, then your accounts may be ignored for inactivity if it's gone on long enough. The whole tradeline drops out of some calculations.
Also if you recently acquired the mortgage and/or auto loan, you may have been re-bucketed as well. There's a bunch of other resasons why your credit score may have dropped but closing a card is incredibly rare to be beneficial to one's FICO score as others have pointed out.... and unless you have a billizion cards (like 20+) it's not even worth considering that option.
Also I'll ask, where are you pulling your score from?
A card with a $50K limit might not be factored into your utilization for FICO scoring purposes. I might be wrong about this, but I am pretty sure I've read posts here that seem to indicate that a credit limit above $35K on a credit card does not factor into UTIL.
@CribDuchess wrote:A card with a $50K limit might not be factored into your utilization for FICO scoring purposes. I might be wrong about this, but I am pretty sure I've read posts here that seem to indicate that a credit limit above $35K on a credit card does not factor into UTIL.
I think this is partially true. AFAIK the portion of the tradeline in excess of 35k or 40k (I can't recall which one) would not factor into util calculations, but the first 35k would.
So, as I understand it- if the balance is reported as $500 then fico would treat it as 500/35k for util purposes rather than 500/50k. Not sure if this 15k exclusion would hold true for overall util or if it is tradeline specific
@OptimasPrime wrote:
@CribDuchess wrote:A card with a $50K limit might not be factored into your utilization for FICO scoring purposes. I might be wrong about this, but I am pretty sure I've read posts here that seem to indicate that a credit limit above $35K on a credit card does not factor into UTIL.
I think this is partially true. AFAIK the portion of the tradeline in excess of 35k or 40k (I can't recall which one) would not factor into util calculations, but the first 35k would.
So, as I understand it- if the balance is reported as $500 then fico would treat it as 500/35k for util purposes rather than 500/50k. Not sure if this 15k exclusion would hold true for overall util or if it is tradeline specific
I'm not certain on this one, but admittedly I don't know many folks that I can go ask on 35K CL credit cards; however, some revolving accounts above the 35K mark tend to get counted as installment loans (LOC's specifically from what I've read), and as such I think they aren't utilized for revolving calculation. I could be wrong on this, but that's what's been reported here.
Don't close it. Use it for purchases you otherwise make. Don't pay in advance. Let the balances report but pif after the statement cuts. Your FICO is hurting because you aren't using credit at all. Prepaying to get a zero balance reporting is counterproductive if you don't show prior usage,
It's been reported that high CLs (over 40k) may be discarded for FICO purposes. That could be a cause.
Can you request a credit limit decrease?