Had a chat with my sister's boyfriend about credit scores and it shook me

So last weekend my sister's boyfriend Dave was over and he works in car financing. I was complaining about my 680 score and how I can't get good rates on anything. He asked to see my credit report and pointed out I have three store cards I opened just for the discounts but never use. He said those accounts are hurting me because they're dragging down my average account age and I only have $300 limits on them. I never once thought about closing them or asking for a limit increase. He also told me my two small medical collections from 2019 might be removable since they were billing errors I never fought. That conversation hit me different because I've been paying for Credit Karma thinking I knew everything but I was missing the basics. Has anyone else found that closing old store cards or disputing old medical bills helped their score a noticeable amount?

3 comments

3 Comments

angela_harris23d ago

Oh man that reminds me I had a Macy's card for years and closing it dropped me twenty points instantly.

fiona_west2123d ago

Honestly I think people underestimate how much the LENGTH of your credit history matters. Closing that Macy's card probably wiped out years of good payment history all at once. What nobody talks about is how store cards often have LOWER limits than regular cards, so even if you keep them open but barely use them, your utilization ratio can actually improve. I'd rather let a store card sit in a drawer with a small recurring charge than risk the hit from closing it.

gracec1623d ago

HIT me hard too when I finally realized the same thing. @angela_harris I bet that Macy's card drop was a shock, I had an Old Navy card I opened for a 30% discount and never touched again. Closing it tanked my score by like 15 points because it was one of my oldest accounts. But here's the thing I learned from Dave you could be right about the medical collections too, I had a $200 bill from a lab that was a mistake and fighting it got it deleted and my score jumped 20 points almost overnight. So now I just keep my old store cards open with like a $5 autopay on Netflix or something and it barely hurts my utilization. Honestly I wish someone had told me this years ago instead of me thinking Credit Karma was teaching me everything.