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Huge Mistake

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Huge Mistake

I had about 8 credit cards going back a few years.  Among them, I had an Amazon Prime card with about a $4,000 cl, a Capital One Big card with a cl of $3500, etc.  The day after I closed them I signed up for a MyFico account and I suddenly realized I made a bad mistake.

I only kept a $1000 Target RedCard and a $9000 US Bank 123 Rewards card. I'm trying not to beat myself up.  I'm gardening now for a couple years as far as credit cards go. Is that a good decision? Thank you in advance. 

 

Message 1 of 4
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Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Huge Mistake

It depends on your needs and goals. If the cards you closed weren't helping you (as in you had no real use for them), then closing them isn't a bad thing in and of itself. Closing that many at once may raise an eyebrow or two but you should be ok. You won't lose the age factors of those cards until they fall off your reports, which is usually about ten years after closure, so that's safe. 

Do you need new credit soon - loan, mortgage, car? If not, relax. If you do, then depending on balances on your remaining cards, the loss of the credit lines may have hurt your score by driving your utilization upward. That can be corrected simply by paying down your balances. 

If you need to idealize your scores, you'll want to add a card, as maximizing your profile will usually require three cards and a loan at the minimum. I'd let things settle out for a bit, see where everything lands once the closed cards are reported as such, and then we can help you figure out what path to take based on your needs.

 

Welcome to the forums Smiley Happy

Message 2 of 4
SouthJamaica
Mega Contributor

Re: Huge Mistake


@Anonymous wrote:

I had about 8 credit cards going back a few years.  Among them, I had an Amazon Prime card with about a $4,000 cl, a Menards Capital One Big card with a cl of $3500, etc.  The day after I closed them I signed up for a MyFico account and I suddenly realized I made a bad mistake.

I only kept a $1000 Target RedCard and a $9000 US Bank 123 Fry's Rewards card. I'm trying not to beat myself up.  I'm gardening now for a couple years as far as credit cards go. Is that a good decision? Thank you in advance. 

~Mary


I would need to know

-what your scores are

-when your most recent accounts (both closed and open) were opened


Total revolving limits 741200 (620700 reporting) FICO 8: EQ 703 TU 704 EX 691

Message 3 of 4
Slabenstein
Valued Contributor

Re: Huge Mistake


@Anonymous wrote:

I had about 8 credit cards going back a few years.  Among them, I had an Amazon Prime card with about a $4,000 cl, a Menards Capital One Big card with a cl of $3500, etc.  The day after I closed them I signed up for a MyFico account and I suddenly realized I made a bad mistake.

I only kept a $1000 Target RedCard and a $9000 US Bank 123 Fry's Rewards card. I'm trying not to beat myself up.  I'm gardening now for a couple years as far as credit cards go. Is that a good decision? Thank you in advance. 

~Mary


If you're concerned that closing those cards was a mistake in terms of FICOs, the main impact in the short term would be if losing that $7,000 to TCL took you across some util thresholds.  If that's so, it's something that's easily addressed if you have the funds.  If the Amazon Prime card was the Chase version you will probably lose some points for going down from 2 to 1 open bankcards, but if it was the Synchony store card then you don't need to worry about that.  In the short term, closing those cards will have no impact on your aging metrics since closed cards count for aging for as long as they're on your reports, and they can report for up to 10 years.  When they do eventually fall off they could have a scoring impact, but what it would be would depend on how much older they are than your oldest reporting account at that time and how their ages compare to you AAoA at that time.


Message 4 of 4
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