@Anonymous wrote:Hi,
I apologize in advance as I'm sure this has been asked to death. I've googled and I've read a dozen posts on this forum, and most of them say the same thing.. but it doesn't really answer my question in a way I can wrap my head around.
My first card was a Capital One secured card, my credit score was a big fat 0 at the time due to never having had credit. It is around 18 months old now. After 6 months I got my first FICO score (around 650ish) and have since then opened other cards and built my FICO score up to 725 average between the 3 main bureaus. I have a $700 credit limit on that original secured card with $249 of my money on it as a deposit. I have around $17,000 total credit limit with low total usage, so the $700 is pretty insignificant overall. I no longer want to pay the annual fee or let them keep making interest off my $249 for zero rewards and a terrible APR. From my understanding if I raise enough fuss they may waive the annual fee for me, but Capital One never unsecures the cards or converts them to a rewards card. I barely use it, so I'm ok with cancelling it completely.
From what I've read the Capital One account history will show for 10 years on my credit report. Does this mean I still have an 18 month old account that will continue to age?
Yes
Or will my oldest account length get wiped out and my history become 6 months newer?
No
In 6 months more when it would be 2 years old, will I still get the perks of graduating finally into that 2+ years age group for my score, or will I have to wait another 6 months on top of that since my next oldest card is only a year old now? Basically what I'm asking - is there any real detriment here
No
if I don't need to worry about my total credit available and utilization? Yes I did read the sticky post FAQ, but I'm afraid I don't understand half the abbreviations in there, or the way it was stated.
Thank you both 
Closing the account now!
@Anonymous wrote:Thank you both
Good
Onward & upward
@Anonymous wrote:Just an update.... closing an account DOES nuke your age/length of credit history. My fico and vantage scores have dropped despite balances going down and credit limits going up. My oldest account age is now the 2nd card I opened, not the older secured one I closed. My average age of accounts went down as well.
According to what?
I don't mean to be argumentative but we have a slew of anecdotal data that suggest otherwise. Also there was a large amount of evidence that any AAOA under 2 years counts as one year: as a result if your oldest account was 18 months you haven't hit that breakpoint. I at least didn't see a change when I went across AAOA of 1 year, I did at AAOA of 2 years, and didn't at AAOA of 3 years from my own data and going across, app spreeing below, and then recrossing and seeing the score changes on an otherwise rigidly controlled file.
For the rest, unfortunately most changes aren't isolated and it's at times challenging to be able to point to something explicity and say yup this is what happened. An oldest account from 18 months to 12 months if I read your initial post right making a substantial change is a bit ludicrous TBH.
What's more likely at least in FICO world is the closure of the card may have skewed your number of revolving tradelines without a balance calculation would be my first inclination. How many points did you lose on your FICO's and which explicit scores? Vantage we just don't know as well.
