How do you handle cc accounts that you rarely use?

[Chris679]

If it is worth pulling it out and using it once per year then go for it. If not then closing won't hurt until 10 years from now when one account won't have much impact.

[digitek]

I always hear about AAoA, but I only rarely hear about how oldest account factors in.  Does anyone have any hard reading on oldest account factor?  My oldest account is actually the one I use the least, and I've wanted to close it (because I'm one of those "If I'm not using it, I might as well close it" types), but heard that oldest account is important.

[rmduhon]

The ages of your accounts are averaged together. So if there's a big difference between the oldest account and the next account your AAoA could potentially drop big time in 10 years when the oldest account droops of your reports.

[kdm31091]

It's also important to remember that while AAOA is often mentioned around here, it's a relatively small component of your score. So even when those old accounts drop off you're unlikely to see a major drop in score. You may lose some points sure, but most important to your score are on time payments and utilization (which is month to month with no memory). So don't worry too much about AAOA and feel pressured to keep worthless cards forever.

[Scupra]

I understand the account will continue to report for 10 years if closed. If the OP closes the card say, 5 years from now, that's an additional 5 years of reporting.. Does the card have an annual fee? Is it too much hassle to charge a couple bucks to it every so often? Would you rather close it and not worry? These are all questions only the card holder can determine per their unique situation.

[Aahz]

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@digitek wrote:

I always hear about AAoA, but I only rarely hear about how oldest account factors in.  Does anyone have any hard reading on oldest account factor?  My oldest account is actually the one I use the least, and I've wanted to close it (because I'm one of those "If I'm not using it, I might as well close it" types), but heard that oldest account is important.

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Oldest Account actually weighs more heavily then AAoA in the Length of History component of your score.  But that is still only 15% of total score weighting.

You don't hear about it much because there's not really anything most people can do about it at this point.  Whereas we can help or hurt AAoA with current actions, we can't go back in time and open an account earlier then we did.

Of course, that all gets turned on its head when someone is debating closing their oldest card.  At that point the question becomes 'how much older is it than your second oldest?'  If the gap is less then 2 years I say it's a non-issue.  If it's larger than two years I'd be sure to keep the oldest open "forever" unless it had an annual fee attached.  If the gap is 5 plus years I'd struggle with closing depending on just how high that fee is.

[Revelate]

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@Aahz wrote:

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@digitek wrote:

I always hear about AAoA, but I only rarely hear about how oldest account factors in.  Does anyone have any hard reading on oldest account factor?  My oldest account is actually the one I use the least, and I've wanted to close it (because I'm one of those "If I'm not using it, I might as well close it" types), but heard that oldest account is important.

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Oldest Account actually weighs more heavily then AAoA in the Length of History component of your score.  But that is still only 15% of total score weighting.

You don't hear about it much because there's not really anything most people can do about it at this point.  Whereas we can help or hurt AAoA with current actions, we can't go back in time and open an account earlier then we did.

Of course, that all gets turned on its head when someone is debating closing their oldest card.  At that point the question becomes 'how much older is it than your second oldest?'  If the gap is less then 2 years I say it's a non-issue.  If it's larger than two years I'd be sure to keep the oldest open "forever" unless it had an annual fee attached.  If the gap is 5 plus years I'd struggle with closing depending on just how high that fee is.

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If the AF is trivial, I personally wouldn't close it.

I got my Zync early into my build, $25 / year is absolutely irrelevant to me (and I still leverage enough offers to offset that anyway typically)... and because there's an AF associated with it, it's highly unlikely it's ever going to get taken away from me.  The other card I can likely keep forever is a DCU secured card, but my current oldest open tradeline which is a BOFA $2500 unsecured that I don't use much, that I'm skeptical on.

When it comes down to it FICO wise, can get an 850 on FICO 8 with an AAOA of less than 8 years; however,  pretty much every perfect score I've seen has an oldest account in the 20+ year range.  Also most people don't stick around long enough on the forums to make a material difference in that measurement, but age of oldest account in my opinion is way more important for scorecard assignment... AAOA is pretty darned minor, and apparently it doesn't improve much past the second breakpoint which is likely around 5ish years anyway.

[negg]

I have two I have no use for. BofA and citi double cash. Every 4 months or so I'll charge $5.45 or some figure thru work cc machine. 

[grillandwinemaster]

How do you handle cc accounts that you rarely use?

I close them.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Revelate wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

 I agree that if the account is closed, I will be the one to close it.  I don't need it to pad utilization but I don't want any hits to my AAOA.  I was an authorized user on one of my husband's accounts.  I removed myself a few months ago and lost almost 20 points because of the hit to my AAOA. I don't want to see that happen if I close an account.  

I am going to play it safe and run something through it.  I need to let it pad my AAOA for a while longer.  I like the idea of a spreadsheet.  Thanks for the input!  I definitely am interested in how others handle these types of accounts.

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The AAOA hits are sort of irrelevant when we're talking closing credit cards.

We have plenty of datapoints with people hitting 850 on FICO 8 with only 8 years or even somewhat less AAOA, and since closed positive accounts stay on your account for 10 years anyway, boom.  Removing AU's are a different story than personal accounts.  TBH most of the truly upper echelons of credit scoring are dictated around age of oldest account anyway... I have a few anchor tradelines from the early part of my build (BOFA nee secured, DCU secured, and Zync) and will try to keep them forever to prop up my score in the future regardless of what I do to beat it down.

Every few months I simply look through the cards I'm interested in keeping and drop a charge on it.  Like Nixon suggests I'm almost assuredly going to cut down a number of cards; however, I used to be in the hardcore CBC (closed by consumer) camp, now meh.  Any UW that sees a positive tradeline closed by credit grantor, knows it was for inactivity on a manual review, whereas my 30/60 late on my old BOFA card which they closed on me is also obvious why they closed it (i.e. cause I was a credit dip**bleep**).  

A couple years ago I would've been loath to admit this, but now everything I can is on autopay at this point and I am using Credit Karma's every week or two pulls to see if I have any balances on cards I need to handle.  Was spending too much time on credit card management, just wasn't ultimately worth it.

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I would have a nervous breakdown if I tried that. Me, I  have to know what's out there at all times.