Sorry in advance for the long post. I tried to anticipate possible questions. That combined with my natural tendency for wordiness can be quite dangerous!
I know conventional wisdom is to not close an account in general, except for non-FICO reasons (or if specifically asked by a potential lender, such as a mortgage company). To a certain extent, I have non-FICO reasons (I want to reduce the number of accounts I manage and also reduce the number of accounts potentially susceptible to fraud, etc.), but it's not like they're costing me annual fees or anything.
I would also argue that I have FICO score reasons to close them. The FICO scores I've got over the past couple of years all say that I have too many accounts in general (see
here). Now, I know that closing these accounts won't help my FICO score immediately, but the only way I know of to get rid of accounts is to close them and let them age and fall off of the report. Sure, it may take 10 years, but that's really the only option.
Anyway, I've got several candidates for closure. Two of them are store accounts (Radio Shack and Sears) that I haven't even used in the past 6-7 years. One hasn't even reported since Dec 2003 (last activity Sep 2001), the other has reported fairly recently (Feb 2008), but hasn't had activity since Jul 2003. Both of these accounts have "Account Status" as "Account is Inactive" on my report from myFICO, and both are about the same age, which is about equal to the average age of my accounts. If I can close these accounts without updating their activity dates, they should fall off much sooner than 10 years. Also, I'm concerned that the lenders may close the accounts due to inactivity, which may be perceived as negative. I really don't want to shop at these places just to use these cards to keep them active.
Another 2 candidates are regular credit cards that are significantly younger than my average age (both opened in Sep 2004). Besides being "young", these aren't great cards, and I have a 5 open accounts with BofA - which I don't particularly care for.
My goal is to have UTI basically down to zero in a few months (except for a small balance on a couple of cards to show active use of credit), so there really shouldn't be any UTI issues with closing these accounts.
I also have a joint account that I would like to close for liability reasons (I no longer want to be responsible for the credit of the other person on the account). This is marked with "!" below, as is the AU account which should be dropping off my report soon (I'm no longer an AU on the account).
Here's the whole she-bang so that you all can make well-informed comments ("good" status below is "Paid or paying as agreed", "NR" is "Not Reported", and "*" marks the accounts I'm considering closing):
Format is:
Account name - type - CL - open - status - last act - closed
!Care Credit - joint CC - $5000 - 7/04 - Open/Good - 2/08
*Sears - store - $3600 - 7/01 - Inact./Good - 7/03
BofA 1 - CC - $29200 - 5/95 - Open/Good - 3/08
Citi - CC - $11000 - 5/02 - Open/Good - 2/08
!WaMu - AU CC - $3500 - 4/07 - Open/Good - 2/08
Chase 1 - CC - $11200 - 10/03 - Open/Good - 2/08
*BofA 2 - CC - $11000 - 9/04 - Open/Good - 2/08
BofA 3 - CC - $20800 - 10/00 - Open/Good - 3/08
*BofA 4 - CC - $10600 - 9/04 - Open/Good - 1/08
BofA 5 - CC - $12100 - 7/01 - Open/Good - 9/06
Ntl Cty - CC - N/A - 3/99 - Closed/Good - 6/02 - 5/02
Discover - CC - N/A - 12/00 - Closed/Good - NR - 5/02
Chase 2 - CC - N/A - 5/00 - Closed/Good - 12/00 - 11/00
Chase 3 - CC - N/A - 11/94 - Closed/Good - 7/98 - 5/00
Network - LOC - N/A - 9/98 - Closed/Good - 2/00 - 2/00
*Radio Shack - store - $1500 - 4/01 - Inact./Good - 9/01
Barclays - CC - $16000 - 4/01 - Open/Good - 3/08
Ballys - install. - N/A - 9/00 - Closed/Good - 9/03 - 8/03
TMCC - Auto - N/A - 9/99 - Closed/Good - 12/99 - 12/99
AHFC - Auto - N/A - 4/02 - Closed/Good - 4/07 - 4/07
Chase - Auto - N/A - 11/01 - Closed/Good - 3/02 - 3/02
Any thought/comments?