topic Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD in Credit Cards

Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

DaveInAZ — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 17:07:58 GMT

I regularly see posts here about a credit card being closed for inactivity or, with the nicer CCs, a warning of closure if no use in X amount of time. If a CC is worth keeping for it's credit limit or other reason it's pretty easy to keep it active with minor charges, and possibly avoid a CLD.

If you have a Unlimited Mobile phone plan for $80+ per month you probably don't want to waste that on a low/no rewards sock drawer CC, but many of us of inexpensive subs that can easily keep a card active. I once keep a no fee Merrick bank card w/$3100 CL alive for several years just giving it my $7 monthly Netflix sub before I finally closed it. I now have a Disney+ streaming sub for $7.99, that goes to my worthless Barclays Uber card, "worthless" except for it's $6100 CL. While my Sears MC had nice 12 month 0% deferred interest offers last year after Covid19 those offers stopped and the current 20x TU point offers don't interest me, so it gets my $9.99 Experian monthly sub.

And streaming movie rentals are a great thing to spread around onto seldom used cards. I'm currently buying Season 3 of Kevin Costner's Yellowstone TV series on Google Play. It cost a bit more to buy each episode separately then buy the whole season, but buying each episode I have it charged to my PayPal account. That way I just go into my PayPal account and change which card the next $3.17 episode gets charged to, I've spread it around to 5 cards from Cap One, Citi, Barclays & First Bankcard.

The more . . . "established" CC issuers such as Amex, Chase, Citi, Cap One have software that monitor the amount of charges to your card, so small subscriptions/rentals may not save you from a CLD, especially in the current economic conditions, but at least they'll save you from an inactivity negative. And in my experience less vigilant CC issuers such as Barclays and Synchrony just need and occasional charge to keep them happy. Yes, there have been posts about Synchrony CLDs & even closures, but those often seem to be little or unused store cards. Store cards are the hardest cards to keep active unless you actually shop there regularly. So I only have 2 store cards - Walmart, where I shop pretty much weekly, and Lowes. My Lowes card has a $15k CL and I watch it nervously. While I own my home and have made large purchases in the past with deferred interest plans, for the past couple years I haven't needed any major purchases so I stop by Lowes every 3-4 months and buy a house plant /other small purchase, so far it's worked.

I hope others post with their ideas/experiences.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

randomguy1 — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 16:51:09 GMT

Amazon reloads for me personally. You can charge 50 cents and upwards. I do this manually, it might not be ideal for some, but it works when I don't have a monthly subscription to spread the love to.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

DaveInAZ — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 17:06:46 GMT

@randomguy1 wrote:
Amazon reloads for me personally. You can charge 50 cents and upwards. I do this manually, it might not be ideal for some, but it works when I don't have a monthly subscription to spread the love to.

Ah yes, I forgot that one! Amazon gift card reloads work great, and I've read some cards forgive/charge off charges under $1. While I'm pretty frugal that doesn't appeal to me, but if you regularly shop Amazon, which I don't, that's a great way to keep a card active for a small charge you'll eventually use for something.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 17:10:36 GMT

My garbage CapOne would get nothing at all if I didn't have my daughter use her AU card for coffees at Dunkin when she goes out with friends. Each month I'll throw a few purchases on my Delta and Hilton cards to the tune of $60 or so each within a week of statement cut, then pay them off the next week. Those aren't garbage cards but I have zero use for air and hotel spending these days so I keep them fed with lunches here and there or a grocery buy. Their intended uses will return and they'll be waiting.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 17:16:11 GMT

Every few months I pull my cards out and do Amazon reloads. Easy way for me to keep them all active.

As for CLDs, Capital One slashed my card that I use more often while leaving the larger limit on a card I never use intact.

I am not really worried about CLDs. I have core cards that I use and those are the ones I care about. The rest make up part of an absurd amount of padding that I don't actually need. Lenders are free to slash - just gives me an excuse to close some cards.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

blindambition — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 17:26:23 GMT

I regularly rotate cards according to their categories. I have two cards I keep for age, both have a monthly sub. That way I don't really have to think about them.
CLD are harder to predict. Lenders are currently spooked. Sometimes the reason is legitimate, other times it seems to just be a preemptive risk management measure.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 20:48:56 GMT

@randomguy1 wrote:
Amazon reloads for me personally. You can charge 50 cents and upwards. I do this manually, it might not be ideal for some, but it works when I don't have a monthly subscription to spread the love to.

And there is an auto-reload feature so you can reload every month (or whenever) making it even easier.

OT: but while checking that, I finally realized that the 2% bonus for using a bank account is driven by a debit card. Since I use Amazon reloads to meet minimum debit card transactions for reward checking, that's an extra 2%....

Which on my usage, comes to a FREE 90c per year!

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Ragdollkitty — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 23:15:45 GMT

@randomguy1 wrote:
Amazon reloads for me personally. You can charge 50 cents and upwards. I do this manually, it might not be ideal for some, but it works when I don't have a monthly subscription to spread the love to.

Ive been doing this since I learned about the 50 cent minimum load on Amazon.

I still wonder if I should charge over the small balance write off amount ($1 or more on some cards) to actually have a new payment show. I'm not sure if it makes a difference to the banks if your activity is small enough for write off or not.

Someone in a thread on here said all they've charged on one card is small balance write off amounts every month and their card is still active so I guess that's a data point that the 50 cent minimum is enough.

I mostly do 50 cent charges every 3-6 months. I may just do over the small balance write off amount once a year to update "Date of last payment" even though I have no evidence that it does anything. It just looks better to me when I review reports.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 04:09:04 GMT

I always suggest just taking all of your SD cards to anywhere with a self checkout once every 3-6 months... a place like the grocery store, Home Depot, Target, wherever. Take out each SD card at the self checkout and swipe it. It will bring up your total... "$150, correct?" and you hit "no" and type in $3.00 or whatever. Next card, repeat the process until you're done with all of the cards getting a minor swipe. Finish off the remaining $140 or whatever on your grocery/HD/Target card or whatever best suits that spend.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

sladesurfer — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 04:28:25 GMT

Mobile Wallet for me. Half of my card apple watch and other half on my iphone...Use it at my works Vending machines

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 04:46:37 GMT

Thanks for this. Two years ago I paid my Synchrony off and didn't use them for like three months. They closed all my accounts.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 04:48:44 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I always suggest just taking all of your SD cards to anywhere with a self checkout once every 3-6 months... a place like the grocery store, Home Depot, Target, wherever. Take out each SD card at the self checkout and swipe it. It will bring up your total... "$150, correct?" and you hit "no" and type in $3.00 or whatever. Next card, repeat the process until you're done with all of the cards getting a minor swipe. Finish off the remaining $140 or whatever on your grocery/HD/Target card or whatever best suits that spend.

I think Amazon reloads are a lot easier, as you can do it from home

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

sxa001 — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 04:57:18 GMT

@sladesurfer wrote:
Mobile Wallet for me. Half of my card apple watch and other half on my iphone...Use it at my works Vending machines

I will second this one, adding the cards that you can to Android Pay or Apple Pay makes it really easy to rotate cards, anytime I see the Contactless symbol I try to pay with my watch or phone and I can quickly flip to whatever card I want to use.

My Marriot card is my only non-store card that doesn't regularly get any love since I have it almost exclusively for hotels, during a normal travel year it gets used almost every month for either work or personal travel. I have my Marriot tied to my lunch drop account so it would get a few lunches a month even if I didn't have any hotel spend. Of course I haven't been in a hotel or the office since March so I have put some grocery spend on it. Having less cards does help, but I do see now my last charge is from July 26th, so I probably need to get something on it soon.

We'll see how long Comenity keeps my blue nile card open, I received the courtesy email from them and made a $50 purchase for a bracelet for my wife earlier this summer, but I got the card simply for 0% APR offer on engagement/wedding rings, the issue I have is that if it closes that is a near 10% drop in my overall revolving CL. Maybe I should buy their cheapest piece of jewelry every 3-6 months haha!

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 01:59:57 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I think Amazon reloads are a lot easier, as you can do it from home

To each their own I suppose. I've never done an Amazon reload / don't ever use GCs for anything, so for me it's just not my thing. Most people go to the grocery store regularly, so it's not like a special trip needs to be made every 3-6 months to accomplish the self-checkout method and the entire process takes about 10 seconds per card.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

601flyguy — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 03:19:48 GMT

I have store cards that Ive had for years and never used. I just pay $1 every 6 months or so and that keeps them active.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 14:03:56 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I think Amazon reloads are a lot easier, as you can do it from home
To each their own I suppose. I've never done an Amazon reload / don't ever use GCs for anything, so for me it's just not my thing. Most people go to the grocery store regularly, so it's not like a special trip needs to be made every 3-6 months to accomplish the self-checkout method and the entire process takes about 10 seconds per card.

If you never use amazon then obviously not a good match. But it's nothing to do with gift cards per se (despite the Amazon terminology). Basically you are just adding to your Amazon balance that is then used for the next purchase.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

ccquest — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 15:13:12 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
If you never use amazon then obviously not a good match. But it's nothing to do with gift cards per se (despite the Amazon terminology). Basically you are just adding to your Amazon balance that is then used for the next purchase.

Also a great way to meet requirements for banks that need X transactions on a debit card per month to earn Y. If you regularly buy on Amazon, it is just moving some of the expense to a different time and not costing you anything more. Same thing with internet/utility bills if the company supports it (mine does).

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 15:21:20 GMT

@ccquest wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
If you never use amazon then obviously not a good match. But it's nothing to do with gift cards per se (despite the Amazon terminology). Basically you are just adding to your Amazon balance that is then used for the next purchase.
Also a great way to meet requirements for banks that need X transactions on a debit card per month to earn Y. If you regularly buy on Amazon, it is just moving some of the expense to a different time and not costing you anything more. Same thing with internet/utility bills if the company supports it (mine does).

Depending on which cards you have, it might cost a little more, as you lose some of the say 5% you could earn using an Amazon card. But even if you have to use a no rewards card, losing 5% of 50c every now and then isn't going to make a lot of difference!

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

SecretAzure — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 15:47:12 GMT

I didn't know about Amazon Reloads. This seems like an ideal way to keep cards active. Does anyone know if this would be viewed badly by Chase during Freedom's 5% CB on Amazon? It seems kind of like MS but I'm not sure.

Re: Easy ways to keep a CC active & avoid closure or CLD

Credit12Fico — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 15:53:59 GMT

@SecretAzure wrote:
I didn't know about Amazon Reloads. This seems like an ideal way to keep cards active. Does anyone know if this would be viewed badly by Chase during Freedom's 5% CB on Amazon? It seems kind of like MS but I'm not sure.

You are just pre-paying Amazon. It's not MS.

MS is buying things that can be converted to cash and using that to pay off the credit card, rinse and repeat for points.