LordA and Plip.... you guys are a hoot.
Hi Tussking. The key with any credit related question you might ask here is first to see if you can understand what parts of the FICO model a decision you are considering will affect.
So for example, if a person wants to know "Will it help my score to pay down my credit cards?" we have to first know what his CC debt and CC limits are. If he doesn't tell us that, there's no way to know. And that's because paying down CC debt affects three different factors in the Amounts Owed category. So you first have to understand (as best you can) what parts of the model the decision could affect, and then that will steer you toward supplying the Forum readers with the right information to help answer your question.
In your case, your goal should be to try to understand what parts of the model being an AU on a charge card could affect. You have looked and have seemed to be able to confirm that the AU card isn't affecting your credit limits and util. Good first step. What then could it be affecting (in a positive way)? Can you guess?
The answer is age. The AU account could be affecting two age factors. Age of oldest account and average age of accounts.
Based on what you wrote, the following two scenarios are both possible:
(a) The AU account is 30 years old and your five credit cards were all added in the last 3 months.
(b) The AU account is 6 years old and your five credit cards were all added 4 years ago.
In scenario (a) the AU account will still be helping you a lot, and you'd benefit from holding onto it for another year (conceivably two).
In scenario (b) the AU account will still be helping you very little, and it is a good time to let it go.
Because we don't know how old the AU account is and how old your other accounts are, we can't answer your question.
PS. It is possible that some or all FICO models consider a profile that includes a charge card to have a better "mix" than one that contains only credit cards alone. So there is another scoring category the AU could be helping. But the advantage there is slim. You should certainly be looking to abandon the AU at some point. Age may be a reasonable way to make that decision.
