Cancel Your Personal Credit Card Without Affecting Your Credit Score Meter

by Kimberly Reed Jan 17, 2021

If you are having a hard time stopping yourself from swiping your credit card, or maybe your credit card is costing hundreds of dollars to you in terms of fees per year. In both the cases, it may make sense for you if you chose to close that particular account but without hurting credit score meter.

At certain times, consumers may also plan to cancel their accounts especially, if they are very tired of managing several credit cards at once. Depending on your own situation, canceling your personal credit card can definitely make sense; however, at the same time when you plan to do so, it is important to keep the following Do’s and Don’ts in your mind.

Do’s Before Closing Your Credit Card Account:

Carry out the following steps to close your credit card account without making your credit score meter angry:

●     First of all, cancel any automatic payments that are linked to your personal credit card. These can be your gym membership fees or magazine subscriptions. If you fail to do so,  you may have to pay late fees or penalties when these automatic payment services bill the credit card which is now canceled. 

●     Next, redeem your existing reward points in full. In case of not doing so, you will be on high risk of losing them when the credit card account is closed.

●     Make sure you pay your balance in full and then check if your account balance has dropped to zero. You need to do it before you call your issuer to cancel the credit card account.

●     Having said that, one should be aware of the possibility to close accounts with an active balance also. Your job is to request your issuer to close the credit card account to new charges at the same time when you are paying down the existing balance. However, it is crucial to make sure that you do not forget to make payments until your balance reaches zero. Otherwise the account may become delinquent.

●     Now it is time to check your credit report to make sure that the account is reported as closed and your the credit report meter is happy as well.

●     If you detect that the status hasn’t changed even two to three months after you requested your issuer to close the credit card account, it is essential to make a call to your card company and follow up discussing the issue.

Don’ts Before Closing Your Credit Card Account:

Below are some of the important points that you must not do prior to closing your account, or else, your credit score meter will suffer.

●     Think about cutting up the credit card or throwing it away, both are equivalent to closing the account, right? In both cases, you’ll need to call the number which is present on the back of the card and tell the customer care representative that you want them to cancel the account. The company will try to retain you as a customer by offering a list of perks for the sake of keeping account open. In this situation, tell them politely that you have make up your mind.

●     Never close all or most of your credit card accounts at once. It will look highly suspicious to creditors and may affect the credit score meter.

●     Moreover, if you close even one single credit card, this can also cause a temporary ding to your credit score meter.  This is because your total available credit card limit decreases by the credit limit on the closed card, and at the same time, your credit utilization ratio may also shoot up. Everything will end up screwing your credit score.

●     Do not close the oldest credit account that you currently have. This account will often act as a prominent marker for your credit history. If you will close this account, your credit history may appear shorter. As a result of this, your credit score meter may suffer. A better way to do this is; evaluate why you want to close this old card? Maybe the interest rate is too high? Then try to fix the problem. Take this example: you may call the issuer to request for lowering the rates. Or you may also tell him that you refrain from using that card altogether because you want to use another one that has lower rates.

The Take-Away:

At WealthBuilders365, we help clients, with average to good credit, obtain $50,000 - $250,000 of unsecured credit at 0% interest. Yes, you read it right!

Also, this unsecured credit is available for a period of 6, 12, or even 18 months. You can use this amount for anything – from funding a small business to providing a down payment on your favorite property.

If you know someone who needs this type of financing right now, have them call us at (800) 410-9330, and we will help them out right away. You can also visit http://www.wealthbuilders365.com/ for more information.