Mr. BanksStaffAug 6, 2026
Two things happened at once, and the second one outweighed the first.
Paying the balance down helped. Closing the account hurt more. That $3,000 limit left your total available credit when the account closed, so your utilisation across everything else jumped.
If your other cards were carrying, say, $2,000 against $7,000 of remaining limit, you went from 38% to 29%... but you also lost a nine-year-old account from the mix, and that hits length of history.
The lesson is the one from the utilisation lesson in Personal Credit Fundamentals: pay it down, don't close it. An old card with no annual fee costs you nothing to keep open.
