I agree with you George that this is the likely cause of this change, but as a consumer, it would have been nice for this notice to cite that as a reason (which it was NOT on mine).
Um, ok. Happy to say, that's not how I roll. Not to say that I haven't had money struggles, I have.
If I f up, I expect to pay the consequences. I will say I've had cc companies waive late fees a significant number of times. I'll never forget a Saturday morning on a car lot with my two little ones and no wedding ring on my finger. The salesman asked me how was my credit. I hesitated. He said, "Stand right there..." And, that's the last I saw of him ... until I became a lender asking the dealership for business a few months later and they became one of my accounts. Lots of class acts working there including this gentleman.
He made the right call. It all worked out. I took a different route to purchasing and it probably was for the best. My first husband really got us in the weeds financially. I had no problem with most of our creditors, and did the best I could to make things whole.
By the way, I haven't noticed any reduction in my cc's limits. I have 3 Chase cards and too many others
I fully agree with that point, Matt. I earlier expressed that if this was the case, why wouldn't the credit issuer state this in the correspondence?
Understand. My credit score dropped about 3 points and our credit score is still quite high. The remarks note that I closed the cards. No problem for me, maybe for others. I took a much larger hit last month because a bunch of bills hit at once - renewal of our season tickets for basketball (or as we call it this year, our large donation to the university), tenting the house for termites, and our annual car insurance premium. So the score is affected by three large bills but we are still no where near our credit limits. I think that the credit utilization ratio is an odd thing for banks to score someone. Especially for those who pay in full every month. But it's their sandbox. I'll play by their rules. Personally I don't understand the need to give out $25k - $50k in credit in the first place, and for those folks who aren't good at budgeting it is downright awful. If the debt load gets too high, people will just walk away and basically stick the rest of the customers with the bill.But the absolute amount of available credit isn't as important to your credit scores as your debt to credit ratio is. This is the total amount of available credit on your credit report, divided by the total amount of debt you have and it's also known as your credit utilization ratio or rate.
It's a number that many experts say should stay below 20%-30%. Another way to put this is that your total available credit should be five times the total amount of debt. So, if you're total available credit was $1,000 and your total balance is $300, then you're using 30% of your available credit.
How Closing a Credit Card Can Affect Your Credit Utilization Rate
Just as opening new cards can have a short-term negative affect, so can closing existing accounts. When you close a credit card account, you're reducing your total credit limit. If you owe nothing on any credit cards, your credit utilization rate is zero, and lowering your total available credit won't change that rate. However, depending on the age of the credit card account that is closed, your length of credit history could be negatively impacted and affect your score.
What Is a Credit Utilization Rate? - Experian
Learn what a credit utilization rate is, how to calculate your credit utilization and how it affects your credit score.www.experian.com
Before you close credit cards you may not use remember, that can affect your credit score as well.
Thanks.
There are a lot of small business owners who charge everything through cards to collect rewards.
Speaking of this, one thing the wife and I did for all three of our kids was to put them each on one credit account as authorized purchasers to help establish a credit history for each of them. As I recall, it was a gas station affiliated card (good only for gas purchases) but by the time all three of them had finished high school, they each had several months of credit history and were able to easily get credit as needed.
We completed a reno about six months ago and made charges to our CC's as well in order to get the rewards. What surprised me is many places used to charge extra for customers making purchases on credit cards because of the fees charged to businesses by CC issuers. That is not the case anymore - I guess CC purchases became so common the businesses found a way to deal with these fees (or probably raised prices to offset this).
I tried to use a CC to buy my last car but they would only let me charge $2,000.
I think most businesses are baking it into their prices now but with the merchant agreements they can’t charge more for using a CC (although they can give a discount for using cash).
We found that when buying dd's car. We ended up not putting anything on a credit card.