$29 AF worth AAoA loss?

[Desmoire]

So my very first credit card was a Capital One card. Heck I haven't used it in so long I don't even know if it has rewards, but hey it has a custom image of my wife and I when we first met!

Regardless this is literally the only card I have with an AF and it's annoying cause I am always worried I will forget one year and get a charge off. I have like 20 credit cards most of which I have obtained over the past 4 years and my crapital one card is 8 years old. Should I cancel it and lose the AAoA? Or will my score take a huge dip and its best to swallow the AF and keep it?

[CreditMagic7]

Others can probably better weigh the options on that but even if you dismiss it, the AAOA reports good for another 10 years so that in and of itself is really no big issue.

I hear ya on jettisoning AF cards though. Same way in this camp. Slowly letting them go so they don't accidently get missed and all heck breaks loose.

[capnsloya]

You could try product changing to a card that has no annual fee. That way, you keep the age of the account and could possibly get a card that might be of use to you!

[Desmoire]

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@capnsloya wrote:
You could try product changing to a card that has no annual fee. That way, you keep the age of the account and could possibly get a card that might be of use to you!

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I actually called them about 2 years ago to do that very thing, and the rep kept saying "Sorry, you can close that and open a new credit card with no AF!"

[thummel]

I just recently changed over my original platinum that was converted to a qs1 with a 19 dollar annual fee to a no annual fee quicksilver. You should be able to do a product change without a problem.

[capnsloya]

It might be worth a shot to try a PC again OP If you do, let us know how it goes

[Anonymous]

DW PC a Plat to QS Capt 1 several years ago. Until just a few weeks ago with all the Cap 1 posts I would say no big deal. But try it again you have nothing to loose. 

[HeavenOhio]

The problem is that there has to be an "offer" available. They're frequent on the Platinum and infrequent on the QuicksilverOne.

If there's no offer, you might try using the card on a monthly basis and seeing if that helps.

[AverageJoesCredit]

2 years is longtime in the credit game, things change, give another call maybe youll get lucky

[longtimelurker]

Obviously worth trying again.  But back to the original question.    What you need to do is put some value on your credit score, and how it is impacted by AAoA.

$29 a year is "real" money, albeit a very small amount, but what are you getting in return?    As others have said, if you close, you aren't going to get an AAoA hit for a long time, and you would be paying $290 in those ten years (and once the card ages off, your other accounts have aged a lot), so is the utilization important?  I'm assuming the limit is low as it is starter Cap One, so probably not.  And anyway, you can manually adjust what reports if necessary so that's rarely a real issue.

So I think there are very few cases where it makes sense to continue paying an annual fee like this.   Only if say you were about to get a mortgage and your score is very close to some boundary point for interest rates so you didn't want to take a risk.  But even then, just for that one year!