Possible to re-open closed accounts?

[Anonymous]

Is it possible to do this? In my misspent youth (before I knew anything about credit) I played the balance transfer game for a while by opening new cards at a limited 0%... I now have plenty of closed cards - some of which show previous 30Days... I am now trying to improve my credit. Does it even make sense to try and reopen a closed account or should I just look for a new card (suggestions will be appreciated)

Thanks,

Jason

[haulingthescoreup]

You can always try, although the odds of them re-opening aren't good. The fact is, these cards should report for 10 years after you closed them, so this does help your credit. (Until they all fall off at once, lol.) And each late will stop reporting 7 years after it posted, so you will get at least 3 years of clean history reporting after that.

There are two things that you can do:

* GW (goodwill) all the CCC's that you had late payments with. Find the Frequently Requested Threads thread, which is stickied at the top of several boards, and look for the two different threads about GW.

* Get new good credit, on which you will have IMMACULATE credit (won't you?!!) and dilute the bad credit with good. Before you do this, pull all three FICO score reports, find out where you are now, and do any necessary clean-up.

Some things just take time, and if your credit history is still pretty young, you will find that a bunch of 30's loses its impact sooner than for people like me, who are supposed to know better.