@jthompson5254 wrote:Ok, I had a bunch of credit cards with maxed out balances on them and I was having trouble paying my miniums. I was lucky enough to have my parents give me a personal loan at 0% (Yes, know what alot of people say about getting loans from family but I was in trouble and would have probably done a number on my credit not to mention all the late fees and interest charges).
In any event, I've closed alot of my accounts nothing too old as I don't want to screw up my AAOA (Average Age of Accounts). Because I don't trust myself and don't want to have as much oportunity to rack up debt, I am wondering if I could ask some of my oldest credit cards to decrease my credit limit, so that I don't screw up my FICO closing them. Am I correct to assume CC companies will honor my request to lower my limit??
1. Closing accounts won't affect your AAoA until ~ 10 years from now, by which time it won't matter.
2. Yes of course they'd reduce your limits but you'll be really hurting your scores.
Agree. Your scores would suffer because your total available credit would shrink, and this would raise whatever number your current utilization is.
@Thomas_Thumb wrote:
@jthompson5254 wrote:Ok, I had a bunch of credit cards with maxed out balances on them and I was having trouble paying my miniums. I was lucky enough to have my parents give me a personal loan at 0% (Yes, know what alot of people say about getting loans from family but I was in trouble and would have probably done a number on my credit not to mention all the late fees and interest charges).
In any event, I've closed alot of my accounts nothing too old as I don't want to screw up my AAOA (Average Age of Accounts). Because I don't trust myself and don't want to have as much oportunity to rack up debt, I am wondering if I could ask some of my oldest credit cards to decrease my credit limit, so that I don't screw up my FICO closing them. Am I correct to assume CC companies will honor my request to lower my limit??Try maintaining remaining cards open aand with current CLs. Closing additional accounts and/or reducing CLs will drop your aggregate credit limit and cause your utilization to increase. This can have significant negative consequences on score. See if you can muster up some discipline as an alternative.
BTW - 10 years goes by in an "instant" so maintain some old accounts in open status.I've had to say goodbye to many an old friend in recent years and the accounts fading away has impacted depth of credit.
TT what do you mean by that?
@Thomas_Thumb wrote:It means my CK and MyFico 3B presentation ratings for total accounts/mix category dropped as a result of some closed CCs and a closed mortgage no longer being in CRA reports.
Not seeing an impact in actual Fico scores or an increase in Fico score sensitivity.
However, my VS 3.0 scores now drop to 825/826 at basically the same level of "activity" that used to result in an 830/831 score. Note: I can still reach a VS3, 835 score. It appears I can't climb any higher but I do fall further on VS3 under my SOP.
So if you had to do it over would you have kept some of them open?