What impact would closing secured card have?

[RW771]

I was going to post this in the credit card section at first, but since it's more of a score related question than credit card related, I figured this would be the best place?

I opened up 2 secured cards (March 2011 and June 2011) last year for rebuilding purposes. My main goal with these cards was to help increase my score and to buy a house. Well I achieved my goal and bought my first home back in December :-)

This week I called one of the CU's I had one of the secured cards with to see if I would qualify for an unsecured card and was approved for a platinum MC with a 6K limit. So they closed out that secured card and refunded my deposit.

My question is, should I close the other secured card out? This card won't automatically graduate to a secured card, I'd have to go in and apply like I did with this last one and if approved, they'd close it out and refund the money to me too.

I don't want to do this if it affect me more than help. It won't affect my utilization too bad, seeing as it only has a $400 CL. I'll keep it open if it will help, but would rather close it if it won't have any affect. It was opened last March (2011).

My AAoA is: 3 years according to EQ, 5 years according to TU.

Revolving accts: 5 CC's (wffnb/furniture store: $678/$3400, Citi/Home Depot: $1500/$3000, MC: $0/$6000, Secured VISA CC: $0/$300, Kohls: $0/$200

If there's any other info. needed, let me know! TIA!

[Guava]

Closing the card won't hurt you

Some more info if you're in the reading mood: Closing Credit Cards

[RobertEG]

Closing could cause some score impact, depending upon your situation.

It wont impact your AAoA unless the accounts are actually deleted by the creditor.  Closed accounts still score under AAoA.

As you stated, since their CLs are small, the impact on overall % util will be minimal.  However, if you kept them open at 0% util, it would help your scoring of individual card % util.  Along those same lines, keeping them open at $0 balance would always give you two additional digits in the denominator of the % cards with balance calculation.

Its not a simple matter of saying it would have no effect, but the effects would not appear to be significant, and in fact could be beneficial to AAoA if you could additionally get the credtiors to delete the accounts entirely.

[cashnocredit]

Closing a secured CC has exactly the same effect as closing a regular CC.

Closing a CC has little immediate effect if the balance is zero and the CL is a small part of your overall available credit.

Closing an accout will reduce growth in AAoA as time goes on. Compared to keeping the CC open the reduction is in proportion to one over the number of reporting lines. For instance, if you have 4 credit lines, closing one will, 8 years later, reduce your AAoA by 2 years. However,2 years after that you would likely see a jump in AAoA when the closed account dropped off.

[LS2982]

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@RW771 wrote:

I was going to post this in the credit card section at first, but since it's more of a score related question than credit card related, I figured this would be the best place?

I opened up 2 secured cards (March 2011 and June 2011) last year for rebuilding purposes. My main goal with these cards was to help increase my score and to buy a house. Well I achieved my goal and bought my first home back in December :-)

This week I called one of the CU's I had one of the secured cards with to see if I would qualify for an unsecured card and was approved for a platinum MC with a 6K limit. So they closed out that secured card and refunded my deposit.

My question is, should I close the other secured card out? This card won't automatically graduate to a secured card, I'd have to go in and apply like I did with this last one and if approved, they'd close it out and refund the money to me too.

I don't want to do this if it affect me more than help. It won't affect my utilization too bad, seeing as it only has a $400 CL. I'll keep it open if it will help, but would rather close it if it won't have any affect. It was opened last March (2011).

My AAoA is: 3 years according to EQ, 5 years according to TU.

Revolving accts: 5 CC's (wffnb/furniture store: $678/$3400, Citi/Home Depot: $1500/$3000, MC: $0/$6000, Secured VISA CC: $0/$300, Kohls: $0/$200

If there's any other info. needed, let me know! TIA!

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I would close it out. you'll be just fine.