Are small infrequent purchases enough to keep an old card active?

[R083RT]

TLDR: I hate my Wells Fargo Platinum card and never use it so would a $3 purchase from a Liquor store every 6 months be enough to keep the account from being closed?

And for those curious why:
I have a pretty bad relationship with Wells Fargo and so do all of my friends and family members. In 2015, I opened up my first secured card which required extensive income verification, and a 5 day waiting period only to get a $300 secured card which took 2 years to be upgraded to a $300 Platinum card and get my deposit refunded.

During that 2 year time period, I attained a total credit line of approximately $20,000 from other creditors. Finally, they upgraded me to a $600 card. I actually went in on the same day to apply for cards with a friend of mine who got approved for a $1000 college card. The same month they increased my limit to $600, his got increased to $1100. Both of us have amazing history and spending habits. We basically took that as a slap in the face and will refuse to make any significant purchases on these cards and only small ones to keep the account open and prevent it from harming our scores. And during our CLI months, both of us had >750 scores.

[K-in-Boston]

To answer your question, yes usually any charge every 3/6/12 months is enough to keep a card open.

That said, I would ask you a few questions... how old is the card? Is this your oldest card? If so, how old is your second-oldest card? What is your current average age of accounts (all closed and open credit accounts of any type (cards, loans, etc.) averaged)? It may be worth closing it.

[Anonymous]

Is this your oldest reported account?  If not, close it, it won't hurt your score.

Closing an account keeps it reporting for up to 10 more years, and it helps with aging.  It will fall off in 10 years and at that point it may hurt your score only a tiny bit if it was your oldest account when you closed it.  If your next oldest account is only a year newer, close that card out.

The other reason to keep an account open is if closing it means you will have fewer than 5 open credit cards reporting.

[Anonymous]

In general, recurring charges to a credit card are enough to keep them active and not be closed. However if you have a high limit card and only are making monthly small charges to it, then you run the risk of having your limit slashed considerably.

[mkhan1093]

I know the logical thing everyone is saying is to close it, but I have to ask: how much will your utilization suffer by closing it?

[K-in-Boston]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Is this your oldest reported account?  If not, close it, it won't hurt your score1.

Closing an account keeps it reporting for up to 10 more years, and it helps with aging.  It will fall off in 10 years and at that point it may hurt your score only a tiny bit if it was your oldest account when you closed it2.  If your next oldest account is only a year newer, close that card out.

The other reason to keep an account open is if closing it means you will have fewer than 53 open credit cards reporting.

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1 Not immediately, but there could be an impact for some profiles when the card falls off.

2 If it is older than your average age of accounts, then your average age of accounts will be lowered when it does fall off. For many profiles this won't matter. For some, it will.

3 Why 5 instead of 3? My understanding is that FICO scores are generally optimized with 3 or more cards reporting.

[R083RT]

I’ll try to answer everyone’s question in 1 response.

Yes, it is my oldest card, 2) it has a $600 limit compared to my $30,000 overall, 3) my combined history is 1 year and 2 months but this account is 2 1/2 years old.

I don’t have to close the card, even 5 points on my score is important to me. Thank you guys for your responses though. I was mainly curious as to how long it would take for them to close it due to inactivity.

[Anonymous]

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@K-in-Boston wrote:

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3 Why 5 instead of 3? My understanding is that FICO scores are generally optimized with 3 or more cards reporting.

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That's a myth.  5 cards is the correct number of cards for maximum FICO benefit in the "credit mix" category.  3 cards is a "free" boost because credit mix boost offsets new account penalty, but 5 cards all over 2 years old each gives you the absolute most return.

You can prove this to yourself using the much-hated MyFico Simulator/Estimator.  Run the numbers using any AoOA and any other factor but vary only # of credit cards and see.  This has also been proven with many data points across the internet.

The # of cards in credit mix breakpoints are 0 cards, 1 card, 2-4 cards and 5+ cards.

[marty56]

No one here really knows for sure but I would say yes.  YMMV.  I might use once a month on a small value so if you have rewrads cards, it won't affect them that much in use. 

[Kforce]

Most data points say that the consecutive institutions want to see 3-5 dollars, every 3 months. Many institutions are happy with every 6-9 months, and some people have reported 10 years, no spend and a card not closed. To be "Safe" a little spend every 3 months should keep the card alive. As "Irish80" posted, small spend can lead to a reduced credit limit, however I have 2 credit union cards 20+ years old, with $5 every 3-months for the last 15-years and no CL reduction.   Irony-(My highest CL is a card with $5 every 3 months)