Serious question, does closing an old card really hurt your score for 3 years?
I closed a store card back in March because I never used it and the bank kept sending me mail. My score went from 742 to 701 within two months and it is still sitting at 705 now. I asked a loan officer at my credit union in Fresno about it last week and she said the age of my accounts was doing most of the damage. The weird part is my total limit went down by $2,500, so my use rate jumped even though I did not spend any more. I paid the card off first, so it is not like I owed them anything. How long did it take for your score to bounce back after you closed a card?
That store card was probably your youngest account, so closing it nuked your average age and your use rate at the same time. Age takes about 3 years to fully recover since the closed card keeps aging until it falls off. The use rate part you can fix faster by paying down other cards or asking for a limit increase.