3 Ways You Could Damage Your Credit Score By Accident
Many behaviors that could be damaging to your credit are common knowledge, such as missing payments or maxing out a credit card. On the other hand, there are some credit-damaging behaviors that you might not even know about, or even worse, may mistakenly believe to be good ideas.
If you have unused credit cards and are thinking about closing some of them, be sure you realize that this could actually hurt your credit.
In fact, there are two main ways closing a credit card can hurt your FICO score. First, it lowers your available credit, and therefore increases the percentage of your available credit you're using, if you carry any balances. For example, if you have $500 in credit card debt and two cards with $5,000 in combined credit limits, you're using 10% of your available credit. If you close one card that has a limit of $3,000, your $500 in debt now represents 25% of the $2,000 in credit you have left. This is part of the "amounts owed" category, which makes up 30% of your FICO score.
Source: Fool.com
