26
My uncle told me to close my oldest credit card and it tanked my score by 40 points
He said it was 'dead weight' since I never used it, so I closed the account last April. That card was from 2010 and was my longest credit history. My score dropped from 780 to 740 almost right away. I had to call the issuer and beg them to reopen it, which they did after a hard inquiry. Has anyone else been given bad advice from family about closing accounts?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
grant8382mo ago
Man, why do people give credit advice when they don't know how it works? My buddy's dad told him the same thing, said having an old card with a zero balance looked bad. He closed it and his score took a dive just like yours. Took him months to build it back up. It's crazy how one piece of wrong info can mess things up so bad.
3
andrew9161mo ago
and that's exactly what my cousin did too, he closed his oldest card because he thought it was "clogging up his credit" or whatever. i mean, @grant838 is right, it's wild how one piece of bad advice can set you back months. it's like people see a zero balance and think it's not helping, but really it's just sitting there building age on your file. my cousin's score dropped like 40 points just from losing that history, and he had to open a new card just to get things moving again. it's crazy how much people mix up credit utilization with account age, you know?
8