I’ve had a secured credit card for the last year and a half. Finally built my score up from 415 to 692, only 8 points away from 700. This was HUGE for me, I was so excited. I was offered a credit card through the same bank, Capital One, with a $4k like of credit. This was also huge for me because I’d never been approved for a credit card before, let alone for that limit.
So I thought, hey, why keep the secured card when I have an actual credit card through them now! I’ll just cancel my secured account and get that deposit back and switch to using my credit account. So I canceled it, then two days later I was notified that my score dropped 88 points. Literally the only update to my credit was that I closed an account. I wanted to cry. I’m almost back in the 500s. Why did this happen??? Is there anything I can do to fix it? Is it going to take another year to build back up to where I was prior to closing that account? This feels like a sick joke. It took one day to drop my score what it took one year to raise.
Closing an account means you’re shortening your credit history, which yes, does tend to dump your score into the shitter. How old was that secured card? Did you just abandon like two decades of credit history, or is it only 1-3 years old? If it’s the latter, I think you’ll find the score will bounce back pretty quick.
Length of open accounts and total available credit play major roles into your credit score.
Tough lesson for sure but at least you know where to go for advice.
When you closed the account your average age of accounts dropped which makes up a decent portion of how your score is calculated. The only thing that can really fix it is time.
You can try and ask if they can reinstate the account but odds are it won’t make a difference as it might (and likely will) show up as a new account and not show the longevity the previous account had.
Basically never close cards.. General rule of thumb! That cards history was severely helping your score and now its lost.
That said you should be able to climb back up quickly if you utilize your new card and pay it off before due every month.
Is this FICO or VantageScore? Where are you checking it? If it’s VantageScore, just forget about the whole thing, you’re the only one looking at that score and it may or may not be close to FICO (the one that everyone actually looks at).
Not much you can do now other than wait for your current card to age, periodically request a credit limit increase, and wait for any negative marks to fall off your credit reports (assuming you have those, otherwise your score would not be that bad to begin with)
There is no one thing that affects your credit score. There are lots of things. How much debt, how much credit, on time vs late payments, how much credit is used, how often you use credit, how many credit accounts you have open, type of credit account, age of credit account etc.
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OP, I know it’s frustrating, I’ve been there many times. One of the most dastardly things to happen is things like car loans. 5 year car loan, pay it off and all of a sudden your credit score drops 100 or so points cuz that history is now gone just because you did what you were supposed to and paid your loan on time till it was paid off.
That brings up an interesting question for others. If I get a credit card that has no annual (or other stupid fees like low usage), use it for a monthly subscription (like netflix) and paid it off monthly. Would that be enough to offset something like paying off a car loan if the credit history on the card was longer than the loan?
The whole credit score is a joke and needs to be retuned to reflect reality. You pay off your balance only for it negatively hurt your score.
This whole credit score thing is so ridiculous! Thank God we don’t have that here in Australia. Lenders really only look at your income and assets, that’s it.
You’ll get it back soon, it was a relatively short credit history with that card.
Some for raising your credit score with cards:
In general, if you can trust yourself to not go splurging, try to not close credit card accounts, as long as they have no annual fee. Charge something you would normally buy once in a while (or more, if your card gets points or cash back) and pay it off every month.
Keep usage on the low end – less than 10% of your total credit limit.
This way your accounts are active, so they won’t be closed by the credit card issuer for being inactive, and they will get older, and you’ll eventually be offered more new shiny cards, which you should treat the same way.
Things that positively influence your credit score:
* On-time payments.
* Increasing age of accounts (you’ve now seen this in action, and its opposite)
* number of accounts (higher is generally better)
* usage – percentage of credit limit used. Keep this low. Your credit score is better if you don’t appear to need to use your credit.
To keep yourself financially healthy while playing this system, don’t do the things it is designed to encourage.
* Don’t put anything on a credit card that you wouldn’t normally spend in cash. This way you can always pay it off at the end of the month.
* Don’t make minimum payments – pay it off every month.
* Don’t get sucked into the ” 0% cash advance” and “0% balance transfer” offers unless your self-discipline is rock-solid, and if you do use these offers, do it on a card with no other spending on it. Otherwise you can get sunk really quickly.
* Ignore all the extra offers credit card companies will give you (10% off at <insert retailer here> ) unless you were already going to buy a specific thing from that specific retailer.
* Do not finance a car to build your credit. (Also, only finance a car if you must, don’t base your purchase on the amount you can afford to pay each month, and don’t buy as much car as you can barely afford. But that’s a whole separate how-to )
Thing that doesn’t matter with credit cards:
* The interest rate. Doesn’t matter if it’s 6.9% or 24.99%, because you didn’t take cash advances and you pay it off in full every statement. Right?
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Source: Trial and error over three decades, from defaulting on my first credit card, to having to fix that to get my first home loan, to having an 830 score now. Now playing the miles/points game, but that is yet another whole separate thing.
I would honestly spend like 1-2 hours just reading reputable articles about building good credit. Some search phrases that might be helpful are “how is your credit score calculated?” “How to build your credit score” “guide to understanding credit score” and so on. Just be cautious to avoid advertisements and products that cost money. It doesn’t make sense for you to focus on building your credit so much without spending some time to actually understand what you’re doing first.
In regards to this specific situation, that sucks, but what does it really mean for you? Do you have some urgent need to borrow money? A credit score doesn’t mean anything unless you need it to borrow money. So if you don’t really need to borrow anything then it doesn’t matter if it takes some time to build up your credit history again.
People make credit scores into this profound part of their personality and self worth. Don’t do that, lol. It’s literally just an equation using the factors that you’ll read about in your homework above, including average age of your credit lines.
It will go back up in a month or two. After closing my cards my CS went down too
I think credit scores is one of the biggest scams in society. It’s definitely only there to keep people attached to their credit cards, and not close the accounts, making banks richer. I’m really glad that my country doesn’t really use them, we have them, and you can look it up, but it’s pretty meaningless and the number doesn’t really matter, you can still do everything. I think the only situation they pay attention to is if you straight up don’t pay the bills, it would show that, but for most people the don’t really get thought about. For example, I have no clue what my credit score is. I have no history of not paying bills, so if I closed my credit card and my score dropped no company cares, because they see that I always pay my rent/power/internet which is what they actually care about. I have no reason to try and make it higher.
Definitely feel your pain. I only have three credit cards. Used to have horrible credit and spent years cleaning up my credit habits. Built up to a score of 792.
Then, in November, I made a large purchase. A couple grand. I had the money to pay it down right away so I wasn’t going to mess around. When the bill was due, I paid the full balance. When I next checked my score it had dropped forty points. Forty points!! Why? Apparently the large balance lowered my score… and since I paid it completely off rather than making payments over time, I’m now just at 760.
Closing a credit card won’t immediately lower your score. It stays on your credit report for a time and won’t let your credit history age right away, unless you’re carrying a balance somewhere else and your utilization goes too high.
Opening a new line of credit will lower it immediately, especially if your credit limit is too high. Apparently, you become a risk to use too much too quickly.
Assuming you’re not running a balance, and you continue using what you have responsibly it will bounce back quickly.
PS, take a look at capital one’s credit monitoring tools, it’ll give you an overview of how changes you’ve made effect your score.
Yep, I made a similar mistake right before buying a house. Had a bunch of little things left to pay off. A few bucks left on my car loan, a few bucks left on student loan. In my head I just so wanted out from all of this youth related debt, so I figured I’d pay them off and the fact that I was showing 0 debt liability and perfect payment history on every bill ever would at least offset the value of a couple buck on a few pieces of debt. Nope, big mistake.
The system is quite illogical and imperfect and in need of reform to actually reflect real credit worthiness, but in the meantime we have to work with the system we have. My friends abroad think our credit system and how we have to game is kookie, but gotta play by the rules as they are.
Just for the record, if it’s a zero fee credit card, I will never ever cancel it. I have one because it was very useful in transferring balances when I was in credit card debt, but the card itself has zero real benefits to me anymore, so I leave it in my nightstand with another card I don’t touch. You have to just accrue accounts over your life.
Length of accounts and total utilization was impacted. The best thing to do, generally, is to leave it open and unused. This will continue to increase your average age of credit and total available cases.
Now, there may be Length reasons you want to go against this practice and while in the short term or will have an impact, think of the long game. Those 88 points will come back eventually, but will take time as your new account ages.
I experienced issues rebuilding after I got custody of my girls. The child support agency refunded me a year’s worth of support I had paid while I had sole custody. A day later they mistakenly reported it delinquent. Some of the banks increased my interest by 10% while others to the default rate. Some lowered my limit to below my balance triggering fees, while others closed my account. My score plummeted. While I did get the erroneously reported information removed, I tried to get those institutions to get things back to “normal”. Most were not willing to work with me. Over time, I worked my way back and replaced them all. I eventually closed them and swore never to do business with them again. Cap1 was one of them.
My situation is substantially better these days, and most of them seek to offer me things from time to time, but I have a few who I consistently use, because relationships matter.
Stick with it. Manage that new card and pay attention to age of account and utilization (stay under 20% when possible). Become a “deadbeat” (one who pays it off every month).
Be well.
I am curious as to what score you looked at before and after. Your score will fluctuate from service to service. I have a 760 with vantage score which is the one your credit card gives for free. My bank gives me a fico 9 score and I’m at 702. My student loans use fico score 8 and I’m a 714. Length of credit history isn’t as important as balances and available credit. Did you max out the credit card or something?
This is why you should apply for a loan on a house or car before closing an account or making your final payment on your student loans. Take advantage of the credit system when you can.
Make sure you are checking your real FICO. If you are checking credit karma their score is different. Most real FICO models age cards for an additional 5-10 years after closing, CK removes them immediately.
Never cancel a credit card. If a bank wants to close it for inactivity fine, but don’t close them on your own. The longer your credit history, the better your score.
This happened because that secured card was the oldest card on your credit report. Yes, it will take time to build back, but it will build back better, and you’ll see yourself at 750 in no time. Mo, there’s nothing you can do to change it. No it wasn’t a mistake the credit reporting company made. This is one of the ways credit scores work.
I totally forgot about a credit card I had 10 years ago. It cancelled on itself due to lack of activity. Needless to say, my credit score took a hit just like you did. Fortunately, it will bounce back after few years.
Did you call and ask if you could get the account re-opened? Often can within 30 days
If your credit score isn’t going to impact anything you currently are doing, or plan on doing in the near future, then it kinda doesn’t really matter.
You know how to build up your credit, just don’t be unnecessarily obsessive about it. It’s a stress inducing scam that mostly doesn’t benefit regular people.
I accidentally let my oldest credit card account close because I rarrley ever used it. Got a letter in the mail one day saying they were closing it due to inactivity. Wish they gave me some type of a warning like my other credit card did. This brought down my average credit history length and my score took a hit. Now I make sure to put atleast a small purchase on all of my cards every once in a while.
I had my credit score drop almost 100 points about six months just to pop back up in about a month.
The purpose of a credit score is to rate how likely you are to pay back debts, which is more likely if you have open debt you are currently able to pay on. It is not to protect the consumer, it is to protect the bank.
I had a capital one secure credit card. after 10 years they converted it to a regular credit card and I received my deposit back.
Where did you have that secured credit card? With that score you could’ve definitely applied for an unsecured and a higher limit
Also yeah by closing a line you just pulled the plug on all of that credit history, unfortunately there’s really no way to get that back. I am sorry having it at 700 is such an incredible accomplishment tbh
What you did is a perfectly reasonable and smart move, but credit score isn’t a measure of how smart you are with money, it’s a measure of the value of your debt. That subtle reframing helped me make much better decisions around credit scores.
More open accounts in good standing means ‘this person consistently borrows money and pays interest on it.’ Your debt is valuable because they can be sure that not only will you pay them back, but you’ll pay more than you borrowed. If you borrow and immediately pay it back and close the account (a much more extreme version than what you did), they’re not very stoked about that because you didn’t pay much interest.
They LOVE it when you carry a balance and make those minimum payments, even though that’s not necessarily what’s best for you. If I have a card I don’t want to use in day-to-day, I’ll just put one of my subscriptions on it, like Netflix or Spotify, and pay it off each month. That way it’s an active revolving account that’s never near its limit.
It’s a cruel game, and it sucks that you got such a hard lesson. I’m sorry.
A lot of misinformation in this thread.
Closed accounts are factored into your FICO score the same as open accounts. They remain on your credit report for 7 years.
Vantage scores however, do not factor in closed accounts the same way. So Vantage scores will typically drop when you close accounts. But because lenders do not use Vantage – they almost exclusively use FICO – drops to your Vantage score are pretty much irrelevant.
FICO scores can drop with an account closure, but not because of the average age of accounts. It’s generally from other factors like utilization, credit mix, or people with thin files where there’s not a lot of data to generate a score from.
JUST CAUGHT THIS PART:
>So I canceled it, then two days later I was notified that my score dropped 88 points.
It is very, very unlikely your credit report updated with the account closure in that time. They update monthly. Look at your full reports, it’s likely something else.
Paid off one of my cars, score dropped 60pts.
That is what’s wrong with credit scores in a nutshell, a debt that has a term limit to end; when paid off early is a negative. 840-780
It sounds like you’re way to focused on your credit score… Focus on increasing your income and reducing your expenses.
If you manage your finances responsibly, in such a way that you don’t need to borrow money, then your credit score will improve. 99.999% of the time, you wont care. The only time your credit score will matter will be when making major purchases like a house or a business. Maybe a handful of occasions in your life time.
Example: I have exactly 1 credit card which I pay off every month. For years, this was my only form of debt. When I bought my house in 2019, my credit score was 815. I bought a modest house, so my debt to income ratio is still better than most because I work hard to make money and just don’t spend much, so my credit score is still 750, but I don’t care… Because my income is higher than my spending, my money accumulates, so if I need something I just buy it. No credit needed, so credit score irrelevant.
Credit score is just a social construct.
Are you sure the application for the new credit card isn’t what dropped your score? Applying for new cards temporarily lowers your credit score, but it will bounce back in a month or two.
The top comments are suggesting the problem is that you lowered your average age of credit by shutting your secured card. I think this may be a conmon misunderstanding, though. The closed account will still be on your credit history and still contribute to your average age of credit. It’s just now frozen at 1.5 years age (it’s not getting older). The average age of your credit doesn’t go to zero just because the account is closed.
It sounds like you made the right choice. Use the new card responsibly and your score should recover fairly quickly.
From reading the comments, so its basically fine to keep credit accounts open that you don’t use?
Sucks that happened but if you were so keen on building your credit you should have known how credit works.
If it were me I’d call them back and see if they can reopen with same account number. Bet they can and will.