Hello everyone. I am impressed with the wealth of information so generously offered on this board. I have been researching a bit on the fact that capital one does not state the credit limit you have to the bureaus. After searching on this topic, I see many individuals that have stated the same thing so I decided to check my fiances as she has 2 capital one cards. After checking it is indeed true, the limits are not stated. The co cards have a balance of 300 and 200 roughly, which is about 25% of their limits. I am going to pay the cards off today, but my question is, would it be more detrimental to her credit health to cancel these cards, or would it be a better option to bring them to a zero balance and toss them in a drawer leaving them active? Just a little more back ground, she has 3 other cards, all with balances less than 20% of the limit. The highest limit is $2500. Her first credit entry was 1.5 years ago. The capital one cards were the last two cards she got. I am trying to boast her score as we are going to buy a house together next year and turn my home into a rental. I want to make sure she looks as good on paper as she does in person. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
At this point you have already taken the hit to your FICO score due to the inquiry. FICO will use high balance in place of a missing CL in computing utilization. It would make the most sense to not close the cards, but keep them at 0 balance, or run up a balance, say 70%, and then pay it off. Of course, don't run up any balance for junk you didn't intend to purchase anyway. You want diversity of lenders, to insure against arbitrary changes of terms, and to allow you to choose amoung the best BT terms if you need to. Cap One is mainly a problem if you don't have much other available credit from other lenders. Their interest terms can be competitive. If it was only 25% of your available credit, it wouldn't matter significantly. If it is your only card now, let it age some, and use it's positive reporting in 6 months to get another card.
