Advice on how to approach closing multipe cards

[DRAOS43]

Hello everyone! 

I'm a long time lurker here and have really found this forum helpful. I'm  hoping that I could get some advice on my situation. 

Right now, I have 5 credit cards and a charge card but I rarely use most of them except two (Chase). I really don't want to keep a bunch of cards open just for the sake of it, especially because I've already had to deal with fraudlent activity on one in the last year. My concern, however, is that three of the cards that I don't use are all my oldest cards. Below I've listed the card, year obtained.  

• Bank of America (2003) 
• Capital One Business (2005) 
• Amex Green (2007)  
• Chase Freedom (2008)  
• Macys (2011) 
• Chase Sapphire Preferred(2016) 

Ideally, I'd like to close all of these except my Chase cards which have the highest credit limits and the most benefits IMO (heck, I wouldn't even mind just keeping the Sapphire). However, if I did that, I would be losing 5 years in terms of credit age (BOA to Chase Freedom). I'm definitely going to close the Capital One card (crappy limit at $500) and Macy's (extremely rare that I shop there and second lowest limit). But I don't know how to handle the BOA account and Amex (tired of paying $95 on a card I rarely use; I've only racked up less than 25,000 points in all these years and now I hear that Amex no longer backdates which makes the idea of changing to another card like Blue Cash Preferred less beneficial).  Any advice on how to tackle this? Should I just leave the BOA card open? And any reason to space out closing of cards? Any thoughts would be appreciated! 

[Anonymous]

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@DRAOS43 wrote:

Hello everyone! 

I'm a long time lurker here and have really found this forum helpful. I'm  hoping that I could get some advice on my situation. 

Right now, I have 5 credit cards and a charge card but I rarely use most of them except two (Chase). I really don't want to keep a bunch of cards open just for the sake of it, especially because I've already had to deal with fraudlent activity on one in the last year. My concern, however, is that three of the cards that I don't use are all my oldest cards. Below I've listed the card, year obtained.  

• Bank of America (2003) 
• Capital One Business (2005) 
• Amex Green (2007)  
• Chase Freedom (2008)  
• Macys (2011) 
• Chase Sapphire (2016) 

Ideally, I'd like to close all of these except my Chase cards which have the highest credit limits and the most benefits IMO (heck, I wouldn't even mind just keeping the Sapphire). However, if I did that, I would be losing 5 years in terms of credit age (BOA to Chase Freedom). I'm definitely going to close the Capital One card (crappy limit at $500) and Macy's (extremely rare that I shop there and second lowest limit). But I don't know how to handle the BOA account and Amex (tired of paying $95 on a card I rarely use; I've only racked up less than 25,000 points in all these years and now I hear that Amex no longer backdates which makes the idea of changing to another card like Blue Cash Preferred less beneficial).  Any advice on how to tackle this? Should I just leave the BOA card open? And any reason to space out closing of cards? Any thoughts would be appreciated! 

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When you close a card, it remains on your report for 10 more years, and you still get all the benefit of its age for that time.  In 10 years, your Chase cards will be pretty old.  Your age of accounts is not a factor in your decision.

People say you get the ideal score from 3 cards, including one store card.  I would keep the Macy's card and buy a pair of socks once a year.  

Personally, I would move the Chase Sapphire limit over to the Freedom and close Sapphire in favor of keeping the BOA card instead.  I don't like all my eggs in one basket.

Definitely close the Amex and CO.

[LuckyBird]

I wouldn't worry about account age since you won't take an immediate hit on that.  Closed accounts continue to report and factor into AAoA for 10 years.  I'm currently in the midst of closing several accounts myself, and I've decided to space them out, with a month or two in between closings.  I don't think that's truly necessary, but it just makes me feel better to do it that way for some reason and I'm in no particular hurry.  I haven't seen any adverse effects to my scores with the ones I've closed thus far.

My only word of caution to you would be not to limit yourself to only one lender.  I think it's a good idea to diversify at least a little bit, just in case one of your creditors get spooked for some reason and decides to take adverse action on your accounts.  Even though that may seem unlikely to you, better safe than sorry IMO.

[kdm31091]

The oldest card thing is only somewhat important. Even if closed it will remain on your report for 10 years, at which point your other cards will be 10 years older.

I've always just closed whatever wasn't useful to me, and to date, it never made any significant difference. if a card isn't useful I just move on.

If the Amex isn't benefitting you, stop paying $95 a year for it, cut it loose.