Credit Cards

[Tencwhiskey]

I am fairly new to the forums, I am working on rebuilding my credit I started off about 3 years ago with scores in the low 500's I currently have a 300 dollar balance on an orchard card that I have have for about 4 years it is my oldest account that is open it has a zero balance. How long should I keep this card activated? Most recent score was equifax 640. Pulled on score watch.

[pizzadude]

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Tencwhiskey wrote:
I am fairly new to the forums, I am working on rebuilding my credit I started off about 3 years ago with scores in the low 500's I currently have a 300 dollar balance on an orchard card that I have have for about 4 years it is my oldest account that is open it has a zero balance. How long should I keep this card activated? Most recent score was equifax 640. Pulled on score watch.

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I would wait until you have several other cards open ~ FICO likes to see at least two or three open revolving accounts.    How many other cards do you have open besides the Orchard card ?

[Koop10010]

I closed the two Capitol One cards I used to establish credit right after I opened my 2nd and 3rd prime cards.  Once you have a number of open prime cards with nice credit limits, then you can consider closing (re)builder cards.  Until then, those cards are helping you establish positive history and should stay open.

[Tencwhiskey]

I have 3 other credit cards. In which I'm in the process of paying off. I want to cancel orchard before they charge me the annual fee of 75 dolllars in which will be due in about 7 month so plenty of time to get my balances paid off on the other cards.

[Tencwhiskey]

Perfect thank you. I am trying to get my util Down the. I will apply for a prime card. All I can get now are low balance cap 1. Or store cards. But my score is increasing nicely as I was a out 95% utilization as of two mo the ago I'm down to about 70% right now and my eq went up 30 points on that alone. I should be below 50% within 6 weeks. Thanks for the answers.

[Wolf3]

That Orchard will soon be a Capital One card.    See what they do with it before making your decision.

[TATATA]

FYI - 

If you tell them that you want to close your account due to the annual fee, most likely they will waive it to keep you. I would close the account, if they still want to charge you the annual fee. They waived the annual fee twice for me.