At the end of each year, I add up my spending and rewards on each of my cards. In the process of doing that recently, I noticed a few things. First, it took a while. Second, I have a handful of cards that get almost no spend and give me almost no rewards, for multiple years. This got me thinking about closing some accounts.
The next sign from the universe that my card collecting had gone a bit too far came when I looked at my scores. I'm preparing to buy a house, so I scrutinized my mortgage scores. The number 1 negative factor on my TU4 score is "Too many or too few credit accounts." Even though the wording of that is absurdly ambiguous, I know perfectly well which end of the spectrum I'm on. (I have 30 accounts on TU. There's no way that's too few.)
The final straw came when tiny Dow Credit Union officially terminated the low APR on the (now-poorly-named) Low Rate Visa. I got the card solely because it had a uniquely great interest rate: 6.9% fixed. Now it's going to a more normal variable rate in the teens. There's a thread about it here. The card has zero rewards, so it is worthless to me. I called the CU to close it. The person on the phone made an effort to persuade me to keep it open, but my mind was made up. One friendly conversation and one docusigned document, and poof! it was closed.
Next up was my Premier Finance Card Program card. This was forcibly converted from an old HSBC card a year or so ago. It gets 2% cashback on some category (maybe dining?) and 1% cashback on everything else, but those are not useful for me. The card is almost 20 years old, but I have others that are older, and I haven't put real spend on it in several years. I closed it with quick phone call. This rep was all business and prioritized speed over friendliness, with no attempt to change my mind. Two down.
The final card in this wave of closures was my Capital One Quicksilver. The card is over 20 years old, and was once my daily driver, but now its rewards can't compete with other cards I have. It has the lone baddie on my file: a 30D from 6+ years ago. I asked Capital One for a goodwill removal of the 30D a few years ago. Even talked to someone in the Executive Office about it, but my story wasn't sufficiently compelling and they declined to remove it. Closing it was amusingly easy. I called and didn't even have to talk to a human. The call probably took less than a minute, and was handled entirely by their automated system. I'm glad they are taking the break-up well.
None of these cards have an AF, and none of their issuers have any cards I want that I could conceivably PC into. Total CL lost was around $36k, which is less than 10% of my total and won't move the needle on my utilization. It feels good (lighter, somehow) to have three fewer apps to open when I do my habitual check of all my cards.
I was happy when I got these cards and now I'm happy to close them. That seems like a paradox, but I'm confident there is some psychological explanation. My guess is that closing them makes me feel like I have some control over my world. It's tiny, but it's something.
