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My credit score jumped 40 points after I fixed a dumb mistake from college
I was cleaning out some old boxes and found a statement from a campus bookstore credit card I opened in 2018. I thought I closed it, but it was still open with a $2 balance from a random fee. That tiny balance was being reported as late every month for like 3 years. Paid it off and closed the account, and my FICO score went from 680 to 720 in about 6 weeks. Has anyone else had a random old account mess with their score for years?
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jamies457d ago
Read somewhere that the FICO formula actually treats small balances worse than zero balances because it looks like you're still using credit but barely. So that $2 was probably doing double damage - both the late payments and the tiny utilization. Wild how a pizza's worth of debt can mess up your life for years. I had a library fine I forgot about show up on my credit once. Not even $10 but it took forever to get removed.
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jessicaw112mo ago
That's brutal, a two dollar fee tanking your score for three years. I had a similar thing with a forgotten gym membership that went to collections.
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rivera.henry2mo ago
Credit systems are designed to catch small mistakes like that, though. It's not really about the amount.
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