I got this letter from Washington Mutual telling me they've canceled my credit card account because they noticed I haven't used it in awhile. In addition to not using my account recently, they also noted these two things:

• Proportion of balances to credit limits on bank/national revolving or other revolving accounts is too high
• Amount owed on revolving accounts is too high

I was away from home when I read the letter, so I immediately panicked and began sinking into a depression. This could ONLY mean that my credit rating has sunk so low that I'll never get another account approved in my lifetime! Nothing can be done now, we're doomed!!

Then I called Mr. A and told him, and he reinforced that little tiny voice inside me that I'd heard saying, “Excuse Mrs. Accountability, but do you recall that WaMu was having some financial problems? Of course they are going to try to put the blame onto you.”

I was still bummed because even though I had no intention of using that card, they canceled me! They rejected me! I consoled myself that Mr. A was most likely right, and I tried to forget about it until I had the chance to check my credit score the next day.

First I went to CreditKarma to see what my score looked like there. I checked it last in October and it was 763. Today it's 728.

Then I logged into my account at Free Credit Report but I discovered you have to pay $9.99 for your credit report – not your credit score, mind you, that costs an additional $5.00. But I really needed to know and I didn't want to waste time figuring out how to get my report “free” again. Besides, I thought we were eligible for a free report from each company once a year. Why did Free Credit Report charge me? Do I have to sign up for a new account each time? How annoying.

It would have cost me $34.95 for reports and scores from all three companies, but I wanted to do that thing that I've heard others talk about – get a report from each company every four months. Only Free Credit Report didn't allow me to make a choice for which company I wanted to get a report from. The choice is to get a “single” report. I would have chosen Transunion, as that is who WaMu used. I guess it turned out okay though, because the letter says I can request a free report within 60 days.

Free Credit Report gave me a report and score from Experian. My score is 768 and I'm in the “Excellent” category.

As far as my “proportion of balances to credit limits” being too high – I've heard that we should keep that ratio to 20%. I'm good there. In fact I'm at 25% on all but one of the accounts.

So I'm going to lay my worries to rest for the time being. My credit score is lower than it was in October 2007, but I do have more debt. My Experian credit score two years ago was 836, now it's 768. But that's still considered “Excellent”.

Have you checked your credit reports (and scores) lately?

Yours Truly,

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