Q & A Friday:
Hey Hey It's Q & A Friday!
Don't forget to join me for a live Q & A on Periscope at 12p cst!!!
Q: I applied for a few store credit cards over the labor day weekend and my scores dropped about 25 points! Do store credit cards cause your scores to drop more than any other inquiry, because I applied for a car and had about 14 of them and my scores only dropped about 7 points.
A. Wow, you had your credit pulled 3 times in one weekend?
When you apply for a car, as long as your credit is pulled within a 30-day window it only counts as 1 inquiry. So even though your credit was pulled over 14 times, only 1 inquiry counted.
When you applied for those store credit cards, all 3 counted. If an inquiry affects your scores or not depends on what else is going on with your credit. You applied for a riskier credit type (store credit card) in a short period of time, if you have a habit of applying for any type of credit in a small period of time it is scored as you being more risky and your credit scores will reflect that increased risk.
Fortunately, inquiries have the most impact for 6mths and then taper off and have no impact after 12mths, and delete in 24mths. AND, if you keep your balances super low and pay on time, that will factor into your credit scores much more than the inquiries did.
Hope this helps 🙂
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