
Recently, my wife received a new Discover Card to replace an expired card, but she forgot she even had this particular card in her name! It turns out she used the card when she lived with her parents and even though she hadnt used the card for several years, it was still active.
We looked into it a little bit, and it turned out she had a $15,000 limit on it. Add that credit limit to another Discover Card, free credit reports government Lubbock a credit card through our bank, and a mortgage in her name (she bought the house before we were married and I was never added to the mortgage), and we found out she has a lot of available credit to her name!
Time to reduce the amount of credit to improve her score! We called customer service to cancel the card and while we were going through the process, I remembered that we shouldnt cancel the card because your length of credit history affects your score.
This card free credit reports government Lubbock was about 12 years old, which is a very good age to keep on your credit. Well, it turns out credit card companies dont like free credit reports government Lubbock to lose customers, so they transferred us to a CSR intent on keeping free credit reports government Lubbock us as customers. free credit report history In the end, we kept the card open and had it switched to the Discover® More® Card which offers great rewards benefits. The Discover Card rep offered to lower the credit limit to $1,000, which is the minimum line of credit you can have. This helped lower her available credit limit and should help improve her credit score.
The last time I checked was a couple years ago when I bought my car. My wife hasnt checked hers in about the same amount of time, when she got a mortgage. One of the reasons Ive written about credit scores so often lately is because I knew I needed to free credit reports government Lubbock check ours, and I was interested in learning about it. Related Articles:
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29 comments read them below or add one Ive got a good credit score, and ive only got two open credit cards. Granted, theyve both been open for probably 6-10 years.
I was thinking free credit reports government Lubbock about canceling one of them, and probably will. At this point for me I cant even think of a good reason to keep it open. It may hurt my credit score a little bit, but at this point Im not sure i care that much. We own both our cars, free credit reports government Lubbock we own our house, and we cant conceive of needing to use credit any time in the near future. check credit rating free We pay cash for everything now, and weve got 6 months of expenses in our high yield savings account. The credit score in my opinion is more important for people who plan on taking out more loans in the near future, and Im not planning on doing that. Ive canceled a couple other unused cards as well, but I wish I hadnt closed the card I did because that was my longest running line of credit.