Question on closing a store card that has less age than the average age of all the combined cards.

[Anonymous]

I was wondering what the impact will be on my scores if I close my Walmart store card?

I have a total of 14 open accounts. I did a calculation on the average credit history.

With the Walmart credit, my average is 2.99 years and if I cancel it, the average goes up to 3.02 yrs since the Walmart card is only 2 years old.

The card only has CL $470 and has a $0 balance. Not doing much for Util. and hard to get CLi.

Should I still keep that card?

If I close the account, will my scores drop?

[Anonymous]

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Solarjuju wrote:

I was wondering what the impact will be on my scores if I close my Walmart store card?

I have a total of 14 open accounts. I did a calculation on the average credit history.

With the Walmart credit, my average is 2.99 years and if I cancel it, the average goes up to 3.02 yrs since the Walmart card is only 2 years old.

The card only has CL $470 and has a $0 balance. Not doing much for Util. and hard to get CLi.

Should I still keep that card?

If I close the account, will my scores drop?

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Once something is reporting, it's not just a matter of closing it in order to get it to stop counting in average age.

If you close it, it will continue to report for ten years, during which time it will continue to figure in average age.  Your average age will NOT be affected right away, for good or for bad, if you close it, because it won't fall off for another ten years.

However, closing it will decrease your total CL immediately, which may hurt your util.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the input.

I guess credit scoring isn't that easy as doing simple calculations.