Merging Multiple Cards

[Anonymous]

Let me start this off by saying my girlfriend has an incredible credit score, somewhere north of 800.  For some reason, she has a Chase Freedom card and two Chase Slate cards.  She just got an offer for a Chase Sapphire card, and this was when she brought it to my attention that she already had 3 Chase cards.  She doesn't carry a balance on any of these cards, and it's just very cumbersome to have 3 cards at the same bank.  Can she merge the history of these cards into one so she doesn't get dinged for closing them all?

[jforsyth]

Closing cards is not a big deal. Check out the sticky'd thread about closing cards.

Basically, a closed card will continue to report and possitively affect the average age of her accounts for about 10 years, at which point they would disappear from her reports.

Techinically speaking, if she were to merge 2 of those chase accounts into the one that she opened first, her AAoA would go UP after 10 years when the 2 accounts fall off of her reports. With scores over 800, I see little to no risk in just simply calling chase and seeing if merging the accounts would be possible.

[jforsyth]

Just make sure that if she is allowed to merge the accounts, have them merged into her oldest existing account and make sure that all history is retained.

[Walt_K]

---

@jforsyth wrote:

Closing cards is not a big deal. Check out the sticky'd thread about closing cards.

Basically, a closed card will continue to report and possitively affect the average age of her accounts for about 10 years, at which point they would disappear from her reports.

Techinically speaking, if she were to merge 2 of those chase accounts into the one that she opened first, her AAoA would go UP after 10 years when the 2 accounts fall off of her reports. With scores over 800, I see little to no risk in just simply calling chase and seeing if merging the accounts would be possible.

---

You're assuming that she adds no other credit in the next 10 years. 

If the accounts don't have an annual fee, keeping them open is a good idea for the effect on AAoA.  She'll have three older accounts that serve to balance against new credit that is added.  But as mentioned, there will be no immediate effect with regard to age.  There is an effect on utilization by closing accounts, but if she isn't letting balances report, there will be no effect.  The sticky covers all of this.

If she doesn't want to worry about having to use the cards to keep them active, she could set up a recurring monthly payment on the card and set up autopayments.  Of course, there is a value to simplicity as well, so if she doesn't want to deal with it, I could see closing the accounts.