How much will another credit card help me???

[Ijbennett2]

I have about a 670-730 credit scores depending on the score.  I'm looking more specifically at car and mortgage scores at the moment, and fico 8.

The only current credit I have is 1 credit card and a mortgage.  I just paid off 2 other mortgages with selling a house.  My utilization is always kept below 5% on the CC.  

How much would adding a credit card and keeping it a 0 balance (and the other below 5%) help my scores?  What would mortgage, car and Fico 8 do immediately?  

I do have some blemishes with missed payments 3-6.5 years ago.

[Thomas_Thumb]

I would expect your score to drop 15-20 points initially and stay below current score for up to 6 months. Why? If your current card is over 12 months old adding a new revolving account puts your file in the new account penalty box. On the other hand, if your current card is less than a year old, you are already in the penalty box. In that case a new card won't hurt except for the inquiry.

If you don't need any new loans in the next 12 months, add a couple cards now. They will help your score over time and increase your spend flexibility. Amex BCE and Discover are a couple options to consider.

[Cblough93]

To add on,

I had 1 card on my profile, and I just added some new accounts and when the first new account posted I lost 10 points for a profile with 4 years average age and 7 years oldest account. This is because it pushed my profile back into "new revolver" status. 

the inquiries were another 10 points, so I lost 20 points on average, it hurt me more because my profile was very thin so it killed my average age of accounts. 

I will say that transunion lost 10 points from the inquiry, but then gained 21 points when the new accounts hit. It was the only bureau to gain points for me, unsure why that was.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Ijbennett2 wrote:

I have about a 670-730 credit scores depending on the score.  I'm looking more specifically at car and mortgage scores at the moment, and fico 8.

The only current credit I have is 1 credit card and a mortgage.  I just paid off 2 other mortgages with selling a house.  My utilization is always kept below 5% on the CC.  

How much would adding a credit card and keeping it a 0 balance (and the other below 5%) help my scores?  What would mortgage, car and Fico 8 do immediately?  

I do have some blemishes with missed payments 3-6.5 years ago.

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It depends.

If your current card is less than 12 months old, adding a new card and keeping its reported balance at zero, while your other card reports a small balance, will probably help your scores after the initial point drop from adding a new account.

If your current card is more than 12 months old, adding a new card will sting a bit more before the pain goes away.