This is my first post here, so I hope this is on the right forum.
In Feb 2007, my FICO was 699. We had approx. $14,800 owed on a Providian card with a $16,075 credit limit (with 19.8% interest!!) and approx. $3500 owed on a Chase card with a $4400 limit (and 21.9% interest!!). We've had each of these cards about 8 years. Tired of paying the high interest and getting basically nowhere with the balance, in September 2007, we transferred those balances to a new card (Bank of America) with 0% interest for one year. Due to a huge increase in my pay at work and better budgeting, we are down to only owing about $6000 and that will be paid off by the end of next month.
After transferring those balances, my FICO went down to 640 in October 2007. We closed the Chase ($4400 limit) card in Dec 2007 because they were a pain to work with. Our available credit to us for revolving accounts shows as $39,075. For January, my FICO is 629!!!! Ouch!! Where did I go wrong? Should we not have closed the Chase card? Also, we were thinking about asking Providian to drop our credit limit to $5000 (if they will give us a lower interest rate to stay with them). Any other thoughts? Or how would you handle this?
Oh, by the way there are no derogatory items on my credit report and the only other accounts we have are the mortgage ($107,000 balance, $917/month payment) and van loan ($12,800 balance, $294/month payment).
We're looking to buy a different home within the next year but not with this FICO!
Thanks!
