@Anonymous wrote:
I have one credit card that is about 7 years old; most of my other five cards are about 2 years old. (No lates or anything on any of them.)
I don't use the old card. I read somewhere that if a card isn't used 'recent'y', it doesn't count as much towards your score.
Is that true? If so, how often does it need to show activity to be considered active?
Cards that have not had any activity reported to the credit bureaus for a certain amount of time will get excluded from utilization. So, if your card has been sitting idle for a while and the credit card company has not been reporting any activity, then the CL won't be included and your utilization will go up. Unfortunately, the exact length of time before this occurs is not known. In this scenario, sock-drawering could lead to a drop in score.
Prolonged inactivity can also lead to involuntary closing of the account, or reductions in credit limit. Both of these could have negative effects on score. So, it may be advisable to dust off the cards every once in a while. However, on at least one occasion I have seen a slight (and temporary) drop in score after a previously long-idle account was revived.
