Indeed you may be able to “swap it” with the same bank.Let's say you have a no-frill credit card with megabank for a long time, you notice that megabank has a better credit card with 2% cash back. If you replace that with a new card from the same bank, does it maintain "history" since cancelling an card you had for a long time could affect credit rating.
Otherwise;
a) applying for a new card while keeping the old one open will temporarily lower your score due to the credit check, and then it will recover slowly over time. Given the same spending patterns, your future score will be lower for a while due to your average age of credit being lower (new card has zero age), but your utilization will be lower too, which is a small positive
b) if you close the old one and open a new one, you average of credit will be even lower since you no longer have that older card, and you’re also applying for a new one and possibly reducing your available credit.
The magnitude of the change depends on what other forms of credit you have ands what their history is.
The importance of the credit score really only matters if you’re getting a mortgage soon. If you are, I would avoid new applications and definitely avoid closing old cards, especially if your score is like 760-780, since you need to stay since that range for the best rates
Statistics: Posted by muffins14 — Tue Jun 18, 2024 11:05 pm — Replies 4 — Views 128