topic Re: Closing Accounts in Credit Cards

Closing Accounts

Gritz78 — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 12:56:27 GMT

Hello Everyone!

I have been working the past 18 months to improve my DTI, payoff personal loans and credit cards and just recently closed on the purchase of a new home!

I currently have 17 open credit card tradelines ranging from small under $100 (7) lines to the largest of $6,900. Would it be in any way advantageous to close out some of the duplicate company cards / smaller trade lines?

Home Depot	$300.00
Capital One Quicksilver	$500.00
Capital One Savor	$500.00
Target	$500.00
Best Buy Visa	$500.00
Capital One Venture	$750.00
Menards	$750.00
Paypal Credit	$1,200.00
Capital One	$1,150.00
Credit One Amex	$1,350.00
Credit One Visa	$1,500.00
Comenity Bank	$1,650.00
AMX Marriott	$1,750.00
PayPal Mastercard	$2,300.00
Kohls	$2,500.00
Discover Card	$2,900.00
Amex Gold	$6,900.00

Re: Closing Accounts

coldfusion — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 15:04:43 GMT

Insofar as there being a big-picture long term benefit to credit scoring, not really. If you don't have the time, energy, or motivation to regularly keep track of 17 different open tradelines and make sure that every one of them sees some spend at least every now and then - everyone has their own limit and there is no shortage of people who think that 17 is way more than they can or want to deal with - then it can be worth it to thin out the herd if for no other reason than your own peace of mind. I myself would not close a number of accounts all at once but instead would stagger the closures over a period of time.

Re: Closing Accounts

Kforce — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 17:48:10 GMT

Agree with @coldfusion , close cards slowly, I usually do one every six months.

Re: Closing Accounts

Realist — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:37:39 GMT

I think you may want to first identify your goals to hold credit. What you have now, is yours to have, unless the bank wants to take back, in which they'll inform you to either act or they'll close the account.

Re: Closing Accounts

TrapLine — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 08:36:48 GMT

As is mentioned in this thread, a person has to decide what works best for them.

In my case I have closed several accounts spread over many years so as to not upset the credit game. The one thing that has affected my scoring is being sure to have one account active with age on it. Closing and old account usually will stay in the credit bureau for ten years. "Usually" is the operative.

First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO) has seen fit to delete themselves out after two or three years and being older, did cause a long term score reduction.

May not be a big thing but, be aware it can happen.

Re: Closing Accounts

SouthJamaica — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:33:32 GMT

I don't know of any scoring benefit to closing accounts.

But if there are any annual fees you might want to get rid of those accounts.

Or if the work of monitoring accounts is burdensome, you might want to drop some.

Re: Closing Accounts

NoMoreE46 — Thu, 01 May 2025 01:47:33 GMT

Congrats on the home. Welcome to the forums.

Without knowing anything else, I would close both Credit One cards and the Comenity.
It would be helpful if you

list the typical balances on each of the TL and the purpose of the TL.

Re: Closing Accounts

Gritz78 — Thu, 01 May 2025 15:15:10 GMT

The original purpose of each was to rebuild credit and lower utilization. All accounts are now paid in full and my intention is to use AMX for everday expenses and pay off each month.

Re: Closing Accounts

NoMoreE46 — Thu, 01 May 2025 17:29:59 GMT

Excellent on the zero carry over balances and PIF.

Cards begotten were to pad UTI and not for any specific rewards right now.

Again, I would kill the Credit One and Comenity cards for your purge.

With the acquisition of Discover by Capitol One, I would sit on all six cards and see what evolves.

Try a CLI on the HD card which maybe especially handy now.

Re: Closing Accounts

coldfusion — Fri, 02 May 2025 12:35:48 GMT

@NoMoreE46 wrote:

Try a CLI on the HD card which maybe especially handy now.

Just so that they understand that a CLI request on the Home Depot card will cost them an inquiry.

Re: Closing Accounts

dfwxjer — Fri, 02 May 2025 13:04:01 GMT

Close the first 7 on your list, they're worthless, and then close anything from Credit One. Evaluate the rest based on your personal needs, but the ones I ID'd aren't worth your time.

Re: Closing Accounts

NoMoreE46 — Fri, 02 May 2025 13:04:45 GMT

@coldfusion wrote:
@NoMoreE46 wrote:

Try a CLI on the HD card which maybe especially handy now.
Just so that they understand that a CLI request on the Home Depot card will cost them an inquiry.

Ooh my bad- thanks. I thought HD would be a SP from Citi.

Re: Closing Accounts

Realist — Sat, 03 May 2025 04:52:10 GMT

Age on each account?

Some to many are going to be worthless, but the age can matter. But, since you own their availablity, it makes sense to utilize them to your benefit.

Re: Closing Accounts

coldfusion — Sat, 03 May 2025 12:22:38 GMT

@NoMoreE46 wrote:
@coldfusion wrote:
@NoMoreE46 wrote:

Try a CLI on the HD card which maybe especially handy now.
Just so that they understand that a CLI request on the Home Depot card will cost them an inquiry.

Ooh my bad- thanks. I thought HD would be a SP from Citi.

It's a mixed bag with cards issued through Citi Retail Services. Some Retail Services cards like the ThankYou/SYW (former Sears Mastercards) and the DNSB (Macy's/Bloomingdale's) cards use soft pull CLIs but others including the HD cards use hard pulls.

Re: Closing Accounts

Curious_George2 — Sat, 03 May 2025 15:48:54 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
I don't know of any scoring benefit to closing accounts.

But if there are any annual fees you might want to get rid of those accounts.

Or if the work of monitoring accounts is burdensome, you might want to drop some.

This is a very small point, but I will mention it for completeness. Some FICO scoring models do impose a penalty for having too many tradelines. It is reason code 28, with the statement: "You have too few or too many credit accounts." I have seen it on TU4 and TU BC4. (I don't know if it is used on any others.) I had 26 accounts (13 open, 13 closed) on my TU report at the time. Its effect on my scores was trivially small; perhaps only 1-3 points.

Re: Closing Accounts

Nyrell — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:05:38 GMT

I have to say....I am shocked by TransUnion. I accidentally closed my Synchrony Walgreens Mastercard account, which has a $2,000 balance. I asked Synchrony to close the "Credit Protection" feature, but they misinterpreted my request and closed the account. TransUnion raised my score by +105 points, stating the closure of that account as "a positive" thing to do. Huh?

Re: Closing Accounts

Vinjints — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:42:21 GMT

Sounds like TU doesn't like Synchrony either.

Re: Closing Accounts

SweetSpero — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:48:37 GMT

@Gritz78 wrote:
Hello Everyone!

I have been working the past 18 months to improve my DTI, payoff personal loans and credit cards and just recently closed on the purchase of a new home!

I currently have 17 open credit card tradelines ranging from small under $100 (7) lines to the largest of $6,900. Would it be in any way advantageous to close out some of the duplicate company cards / smaller trade lines?

Home Depot $300.00
Capital One Quicksilver $500.00
Capital One Savor $500.00
Target $500.00
Best Buy Visa $500.00
Capital One Venture $750.00
Menards $750.00
Paypal Credit $1,200.00
Capital One $1,150.00
Credit One Amex $1,350.00
Credit One Visa $1,500.00
Comenity Bank $1,650.00
AMX Marriott $1,750.00
PayPal Mastercard $2,300.00
Kohls $2,500.00
Discover Card $2,900.00
Amex Gold $6,900.00

Congratulations on the new house! 🎉

The amount of credit cards you have depends on how many you can handle. If you feel like 17 is a lot (which is for me, personally), I would suggest closing out the first 7 that have less than $1,000 credit limit.

It sounds like you've achieved your goal of lowering your DTI and don't need the "extra" cards anymore.

A credit card management app could also be helpful to see all the cards in one place.