Man, that is such a classic piece of bad advice that gets passed around. Closing your oldest card is almost always going to hurt your score for exactly the reasons you found out. It tanks your average age and can mess up your credit use if it had a high limit. Really sorry you're dealing with that rebuild, it feels like it takes forever to climb back from a hit like that.

Yeah, it's like the facts don't even matter at that point. They've already decided what they believe, and anything that doesn't fit just gets ignored. My cousin does the same thing, he'll just start talking about something totally different, like the weather. You're right, it is a kind of script. Once you see the pattern, you can't unsee it. It saves you from wasting your breath, at least.

But what if your tax rate is way lower than that, you just gave the government an interest free loan.

That line about forced chats about the weather hits hard. What do you think makes the difference between that and a real conversation at these things? Is it just luck, or is there a trick to steering past the weather talk into something that doesn't feel like a waste of time? I'm trying to figure out if I'm the problem or if most events are just set up for failure.

Ever notice how this is just how brains work with anything hard? Like when my car makes a weird noise, I have to stop myself from picturing a full engine rebuild and just check if there's gas first. Jordan_miller92's sticky note thing is smart because it forces that pause.