Does AAoA "ballast" ever help with approvals?

[wasCB14]

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@Meanmchine wrote:

I prefer to keep accounts open, putting a charge on each of them once every 6 months ( non AF cards  ) unless there is a compelling reason to close them. Just my own opinion

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I like eBills to keep track of due dates, and I've generally been willing to keep an account open if I'll be logging into the same site, anyway, for another card.

I used to keep Arrival for the backup PIN functionality, but I've read that BofA offers the same option.

[kdm31091]

I can say that anytime I've had a recon conversation, nobody has ever brought up older, closed accounts or anything. All that was discussed was newly opened ones, or ones that were closed shortly after opening -- credit seeking or churning behavior. I think having at least one or two stable accounts with long histories is a good thing, but as you note, it is obvious if you literally never use the account, and if an analyst is reviewing things, a dormant account probably doesn't hold as much weight as one you're actively using for a long period of time.

I think it makes sense to worry about older accounts when they are significantly older (many years) than the rest but when we are talking about a few years I don't know that it's a big deal. As others say, you could just leave them open if no compelling reason to close, but sometimes just wanting to simplify from a dozen (or whatever) accounts is a compelling enough reason.

[Revelate]

Even if they did come up, simply state you closed them because they weren't providing any benefit, and you want this new fangled card for XYZ benefit, should be a positive.

I don't think lenders really care what you did in the past short of defaults (though some may hold late payments against folks I haven't seen it personally)... they do care more that you'll be using their new card in the future, so if you just keep tying your answers back to that, should be a non-issue.

For now there's useful credit scoring things to be gained in keeping those accounts open... but someday the GSE's will switch to newer version of FICO (or Vantage I suppose) and suddenly it really won't matter anymore given it's not hard to hold a near 800 score or higher with 5 years of history anyway assuming no negatives.