Closing Unused Cards

[HeavenOhio]

Keep the AMEX card for the time being, then close it sometime after it becomes a year old.

I don't view having two 2% general spend cards as a problem. General spending is where it's nice to have an option. Very often, if one needs to revert to a fallback card, he's taking a 1% reward instead of 1.5% or 2%.

[egaithe]

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@Anonymous wrote:

They won’t fall off your credit report for 10 years since they’re positive tradelines so if you aren’t using them and you aren’t carrying balances on other cards, feel free to close them, I would just make sure they’re at least a year old before doing so - too soon can spook the issuer.

Your utilization buffer will go down but that’s the only negative effect. 

There should be no difference between notation on who closed the card when you’re talking about a positive tradeline. Whether you closed it or they did doesn’t matter. 

What happens if you close a card that was just opened, like a month ago.

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[Anonymous]

If you close an account that new, you’ll not take a score penalty but you’ll likely tick off the bank that you got it with and it may make you look like a bonus churner in a manual review. I learned the hard way with Amex not to cancel cards so quickly and highly advise against doing so. 

[egaithe]

This is a CU card. Will I gain back the points that I lost? Will my AAOF go back up? 
Back in 2011, it worked for me, not so sure about now.

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@Anonymous wrote:

If you close an account that new, you’ll not take a score penalty but you’ll likely tick off the bank that you got it with and it may make you look like a bonus churner in a manual review. I learned the hard way with Amex not to cancel cards so quickly and highly advise against doing so. 

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[Anonymous]

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@egaithe wrote:

This is a CU card. Will I gain back the points that I lost? Will my AAOF go back up? 
Back in 2011, it worked for me, not so sure about now.

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@Anonymous wrote:

If you close an account that new, you’ll not take a score penalty but you’ll likely tick off the bank that you got it with and it may make you look like a bonus churner in a manual review. I learned the hard way with Amex not to cancel cards so quickly and highly advise against doing so. 

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No, the AAoA and AoYA is gone as soon as the account is reporting. There is no way to recover that except time unless you can somehow convince the credit union to remove the tradeline altogether. 

If you took a HP, the points for that are gone for a year. 

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I'm sure this topic has been asked before, but I prefer a personal response, sorry.

I have a number (5+) of rather useless cards that I haven't touched in a long time, and I will most certainly NEVER use them again. I did read a post about cards being closed by major issuers with 6-12 months of no purchases; I have already passed these timeframes on some cards, with no closures, so I'm probably lucky.

At this point I'm really interested in going down to a handful of cards that I actually use... 

So the main point of this is to ask your opinions on closing unused cards, before any action is taken for inactivity. I know that the card stays on my report for 7 years, and shouldn't affect my AAOA negatively until it falls off. I also understand my utilization / overall available credit would be negatively effected. Should I just go ahead and close cards I never plan on using again? Or keep open for age, utilization, option to PC in the future, etc... but also risk an account closure. I also don't know how much an account closed by grantor effects my credit report if there was no negative behavior on my part. 

Any advice will be appreciated.

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1. There's no guarantee it will stay on the report for 7 years after closing. In many cases it stays for 10 years, or even more, but sometimes it drops off sooner.

2.  If you're not going to use the cards, then it really doesn't matter if you close them or not, because if you don't, the issuer will.

3.  Make sure you don't hurt yourself too badly on utilization.

4.  Fact that account was closed by grantor rather than you is of no import to your scores.

5.  Down the road your aging numbers will be negatively affected, especially if one of the accounts is your oldest.

It's really your call. No one can tell you what to do. Me I would keep lousy old cards around for the age. But I would use them. Having cards you don't use increases the likelihood of fraud.