I signed up for an American Express preferred Blue card and got approved for a limit of $25,000. I have a 830 credit score. I realized that the places I shop don’t accept that card and you have to pay for it yearly so I canceled it.
Then I decided I was going to get a Costco Visa. Once I signed up the credit limit was only $5,000. So I canceled that one. So I stupidly signed up for a Wells Fargo Visa and that was $4,000.
Don’t leave yet and please don’t make fun of me but I’m not done being stupid. I decided I wanted a different American Express card and when I signed up for it the credit limit was $2,000 so I canceled that one.
Again I know I’m fucking stupid but how bad did I just fuck up my credit?
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Well you don’t have an 830 credit score anymore but it’s probably not too bad, chill though lol
Plus it’ll go back up to where it was in a few months.
And you only need a credit score if you’re applying for credit. Are you financing a major purchase in the near future? If not, your credit score is literally meaningless.
No Financing. House is paid off I have like 200k in stocks and savings.
house
Lemmy assemble. let’s eat this rich guy
Let me tell you why I’m so lucky. In early 2013 I bought a 1946 Bungalow at 1400 sq with no basement for $51,900 on a 15 year loan. I paid it off. Last year, my father-in-law died and left his house to his only daughter, my wife. It had an outstanding mortgage of $60,000 left on it. It’s a 2100 sq ft colonial with attached garage and basement. I sold my house for $220,000 and moved into my wife’s childhood home. We paid off the remaining loan.
I am fortunate and got lucky on the housing market. I make $68,000 a year. My wife took the year off, but is a teacher. We are NOT rich, but very lucky. I live near Detroit, where the cost of living is lower and that helps too.
It’s at 822 now. RIP in peace credit
Just cancel that Amex card and get another one, but before you get too comfy with it, consider cancelling it and getting another one.
Talk about a life lesson. Credit cards shouldn’t be a willy nilly oh this one sounds fun. They should take research, making sure it’s what you want.
Also, finding out the card isn’t used anywhere and canceling it shouldn’t count against your credit score.
Credit scores at total bullshit in the first place.
It’s credit, a loan, and I’d say this is actually great example of why it’s useful. OP showed one after the other how likely they are to take out credit. Like it or not OPs behavior is a warning sign
Warning sign of what?
That you don’t know enough about credit. Or fraud.
I can agree to that.
Their main issue is all of the sudden hard pulls for new accounts. Each one hits your credit for something like 30 points. I expect doing that over and over rapidly increases that ding each time. They dont want to loan you money if you are desperate for money, so they hit your score if you ask for too much too fast.
Their second issue, credit utilization, i.e how much credit you have that’s not in use, is affected each time they cancel a card. That’s hitting their credit as well, as each canceled card closed reduces their total unused credit percentage.
Between the two, i wouldn’t be suprised if that 830 is 600 right now. The good news for OP is that the new credit dings wear off fast. If they just stop opening credit cards, their credit will be in the 800s again in a few weeks.
They dont want to loan you money if you are desperate for money, so they hit your score if you ask for too much too fast.
Credit score is ‘who can we fleece for the most money’ so that checks out.
100%. It’s a coordinated judgement about who they can get to reliably make them a profit. “Pays the bills on time” is the biggest factor in your credit score.
If you look at each of them (payment history, how much credit is open and not used, how long has the credit been open, how often have they asked for more credit recently, how many types of credit do they have i.e house/car/cc) they all have to do with figuring out if you will pay them.
If the answer is yes, they will give you a giant whirlpool to spend. Once you have it you will likely make them a profit, because almost everyone does. Credit scores are just a way to tell if it’s worth hooking you on “easy” money.
Credit scores at total bullshit in the first place.
Credit scores are mostly fine. They do only one thing. They provide a good measure of how likely you are to pay back a loan. Thats it.
What other companies decide a credit score means and how they use that is bullshit.
Costco only accepts Visa and I didn’t know until after. I’m an idiot.
My cycle is:
- Get new 2% back on everything card
- Card changes rewards so it is no longer a 2% back on everything card
- Repeat
You don’t know the limit until you sign up
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a credit card shouldn’t be about the limit at all. Even with a big project you could have just done it in parts or only done on part on the card. You should never take out cards for a higher limit.
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you could have just called and asked for a limit raise.
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It could be much worse. I was ready for you to tell us about the massive debt you racked up. At least this is something that will go away over time with no cost or effort on your part.
Lol ikr. I read the beginning of the post and the minute I saw them mention the rather large credit limit I thought the story was going in the opposite direction that it ended up going.
Ok that’s good. Thank you
The fuck is wrong with you?
Yeah 4 credit cards in any short amount of time is going to send off the bureaus. To OP, what’s wrong with “only” $5,000 in credit? You know they’ll boost it after just a few months of timely payments, right?
You know they’ll boost it after just a few months of timely payments, right?
Just to dismiss this myth. How many times you put charges on a credit card or how many payments you make has ZERO bearing on your credit score. The only thing you have to do is, when you have charges, pay on time. There isn’t even a measure for “you paid on time” there are negative measures of “you didn’t pay on time” though.
FICO score is only 5 things and they aren’t a secret. Its published right on their website for all to see.
Some card companies don’t boost it automatically. I had the same credit card for like 8 years. Always paid it off in full each month and used the card very often as it is my primary card. I had an incredibly low credit limit of like $1k and was hoping when in the world they would ever increase it since it had been literal years and years of frequent usage and on time payments.
Yeah turns out I just had to ask and they increased it. Then only a few months later I asked for another increase and they increased it again to a much better number. So I mean it’s not automatic at all companies, but they seem pretty open to raising it if you pay on time like you said.
5k is not a lot of money to me.
Ok buddy. And yet you’re signing up for poor people cards
I’ve never really needed credit or credit cards? I just pay cash.
I just smoked a j and I’m reading through this thread and all the regular advice comments, then I hit this and started laughing so hard I almost had an aneurysm.
Thank you.
Hope you’re having a fun time lol
Why is this upvoted so much? This isn’t useful advice, it’s just an insult in response to an honest question.
Plus, he’s not that stupid. He didn’t rack up tens of thousands in credit card debt he couldn’t repay.
First Internet forum?
However, I am SOMEWHAT stupid. I’ve been rather frugal and financing things and credit cards haven’t really been at the top of my priorities over the years, so I’m rather ignorant of it. I try not to spend money I don’t have.
I’m neurotic
I never got what it is with Americans and their credit cards. Why does one need several and what’s up with those credit limits? If you’re buying on credit it by defintion means you can’t afford it and thus shouldn’t buy it. I do have a credit card as well but the only thing I use the credit side for is online purchases for security reasons. Everything else is charged directly from my bank account.
I was thinking the same. The limit was only 5k? We live in very different worlds lol.
The only reason I want a limit that high is to be able to book a group holiday on it. (With people I trust to pay me back). So much less stressful (and lucrative if you have a rewards card)
Thanks for the help!
You probably dipped your score a bit since any “hard” credit checks will ding your score, especially a lot in a short period of time.
You did more damage by canceling the cards than getting them and keeping them. In the end, had you kept the cards, it would have improved your score (even if you never put any charges on them because having the space counts positively toward your debt-to-credit ratio in FICO).
Yeah and average age of credit is a positive factor too. Basically reset that with every one they cancelled.
Oof didn’t even think about that but yeah. I have a very old retail credit card I got when I was 19 that I keep open just to keep my average high. Put some on it once a year just to keep it open
Using old cards is important - if you don’t use them the issuer might close them. I had that happen with my very first credit card. My next oldest account was something like 5 years newer, which at the time was a pretty big gap because I hadn’t yet reached quasi-old-far status.
Why are you canceling them instead of just asking for an increased credit limit?
They said that could take years
Calling them today and asking? I mean now yeah of course they’re not going to want to increase it now.
The fact that Amex only gave you a 2k limit after getting a 25k limit means nobody wants you at the moment.
You just tanked your credit score by a lot. There are two aspects about this that matter:
Each one of those approvals required the credit card companies to pull your credit score from the major credit reporting agencies, and a lot of credit inquiries very close together will cause your score to go down. This is not so bad, as those will only weigh on you temporarily.
The worse one, however, is account age. Opening so many lines of credit has lowered your average account age by a ton, as you now have many accounts on your credit history with 0 years, so you are going to see a big drop because a lot of what makes up for a good credit score is how long you’ve maintained good credit (which means using it and paying it off on time to prove you can actually handle being lent money) and how much credit diversity you have (mortgage, auto loan, credit cards, etc.) .
The good thing is that both of these blunders will go away with time. How long it will take to get you back up to 830, well, I can’t quite say.
Like, this isn’t as bad as a bankruptcy is for your credit score, don’t get me wrong, but you’re going to need to start reading the fine print on these very carefully moving forward, because you can’t afford to keep signing deals for credit cards and not knowing exactly what the terms are. If you didn’t know what the credit limit was up front, you probably weren’t paying attention to things like APR either and that makes a big difference. Why did you feel the need to get a new credit card anyway? It sounds like you had no issues building credit before.
It’s at 822 now.
Okay, after rereading I’m starting to feel like there’s something fishy about OPs story that they’re not telling us. Why was the limit so important? 25k is well more than enough for the first. Take them at their word, they couldn’t use it so they got the second. 10k. That is still more than I have ever put on my card. So why is the limit so important.
It could be pure naivety.
Or, was OP trying to do one of those scams that landed a lot of people in trouble (see: jail)? I believe it was something like you do the check pulls against one card and use it to pay off another, but the scheme depends on each card having the same or higher value. Did OP attempt one of these, and then get desperate when each one was a lesser amount?
Either way. As I said in another comment it’s a life lesson for OP. If it was pure naivety then congrats, now you know the hard way. If it was something worse, then lesson learned that there are no money “hacks”. Only quick ways to be caught. (And trust me, the last hack was discovered within days and the people tracked down, and I think you just witnessed them closing the “loophole”). You don’t fuck with the bank’s money.
I believe it was something like you do the check pulls against one card and use it to pay off another
This is completely legal and very common, in the US at least, I don’t know why people think it’s some shady thing. It’s called a balance transfer and credit card companies actually advertise low teaser rates for doing it. They want you to do it.
They want you to do it
They usually have a different interest rate specifically for balance transfers. They’ll give you a month or two of no interest and then your normal spending will start accruing normal interest, but the transferred balance will accrue interest at some ridiculous rate
It’s usually 12 months or longer.
Whether its 12 months of grace or 12 seconds, the interest rate that comes after the grace period is still scalping
Not so much the case anymore. 10 years ago yeah, but recently most cards won’t charge back interest. Interest going forward is horrendous though, so yes definitely have a plan to pay it off beforehand.
I am redoing my patio and it’s expensive. I want to earn points. I’m going to immediately pay it off, but it’s free money that way.
I have a chase sapphire reserve (visa) that has a credit limit of $24,000. I don’t understand why you keep picking cards with low credit limits. Do your research first then apply. Plus credit limits are based on your history with the bank and your annual income. If you have a low income, then they won’t approve a large credit limit.
Also do you not read the sign on the stores you shop at? Pretty sure they advertise which card network they accept.
You can also literally call customer service and ask for the stipulations for an increase.
Credit cards are not your clothes.
I know. That’s why I said I’m stupid. I’m beating myself up enough. I know I’m fucking stupid and don’t deserve what I have. I don’t need some internet jerk to tell me how fucking stupid I am so they can feel good about themselves. Thanks, though.
Damn, now you made a stupid comment too. Time to retract and reflect.
Opening a new line of credit is only a temporary hit to your score. Multiple cards in a short time will be a bigger hit, but it’ll eventually pass.
Most if not all of those cards offer a free credit report that could tell you how much of an impact this had on your score and how quickly it improves. If you have another existing card (don’t sign up for another one) you may be able to see the change to your score once these hard credit pulls hit your credit report.
If not, wait a month or so and use one of your free annual credit reports. You get one report per year from each agency for free, with no consequence to your credit score. There’s 3 credit agencies, so in principle you can check your credit every 4 months for no cost.
How much limit do you need exactly? Also, why did you sign up for AmEx?
Also, why twice?
Lmao, I just realized OP signed up for AmEx again, knowing their store doesn’t accept it
Because I talked to my wife and decided it wasn’t that big of a deal and made rash decisions based on the fact that I was sick of dealing with it. Everyone here is so smart and never made any mistakes before, so it’s hard to explain to them why I did it.
Dawg, you can’t make a post talking about how dumb you are, include an anecdote that demonstrates how dumb you are, and then get defensive when people call you dumb lol.
Also, if you actually want productive help, you probably need a financial literacy class and a financial advisor, not a post on Lemmy.
I can call myself dumb. When someone else does it and confirms it, it fucking sucks. I’m already having a hard time convincing myself not to shoot myself in the head.
No one hates me like me. I don’t need your help.
If it makes you feel better: you’re not drowning in debt because of this, the worst permanent damage you’d cause is occasional random feelings of embarasment. I’d wanna shoot myself too when that embarasing memories pop up, but life goes on.
Honestly man, why are you even posting this? This is like airing your own dirty laundry on the street. Meanwhile, you could’ve quickly lookup how closing your credit card affects your credit score, or maybe ask somebody IRL.
25k is my other card. I rack up monthly debt and then pay it off and earn thousands in credit card rewards
The amount this matters in relation to your 830 score is likely going to be negligible. Are you making a large purchase via a line of credit anytime soon that would rely on a stellar credit report? If that answer is no, fuck it, go make some more mistakes you earned it
Lol thanks. House is paid off. Didn’t need any cars any time soon. I’m ok
