@Anonymous wrote:
Here's the deal...I am 20 years old and got my first credit card one year ago in May of 2011. It was a Discover Card with a 500 CL. I pay the balance off every two weeks or so and have never had a purchase carry over interest. I looked at my credit score tonight and it was 726 with the only negatives being short account history and 3 inquiries.
Tonight, I decided to apply for Amex Zync and was approved. How will having a charge card affect my credit score? I plan on continue doing what I am doing and paying everything off on time. If I do this, this will improve my score, correct?
Also, would requesting a higher credit limit from Discover help or hurt my score? Is it even worth it since I typically have $0 in debt do a zero credit utilization ratio?
Congrats on the approval !
Adding a new account will somewhat reduce your average age of accounts ( AAoA ). But you don't have to worry about the balance on your Zync ~ it won't impact your revolving utilization ( except for the TU98 FICO version sold here at MyFICO ). It will however count as a card with a balance in your "number of cards with balances" calculation.
It's good that you have established an account with AMEX now ~ any future AMEX card that you open will be backdated to the year 2012 ~ this can help you in the future as you grow your credit.
If Discover does a hard pull then the inquiry will slightly ding your FICO score. If you don't let any balances report then a CLI won't do anything for your score, since it won't help your revolving utilization.
March2010 FICO® ~ 695 TU, 653 EQ, 697 EX
