@anik28 wrote:
Hi all,
I've been able to score my goal cards after a lot of hard work on building my credit profile.
I'd like to close my subprime cards as they have an AF and I won't have much use for them now.
will this affect my score? They don't have a very long history, about a year or so. And they're at a 0 balance so it won't affect my utilization. What do you say, keep or close?
I recommend closing accounts you don't need, don't use or don't want - credit score be **bleep**.
This is doubly so for cards that have any kind of fee associated with them, or cards that are generally useless (low limit, high APR, no perks, etc).
In general, I take the approach of acting in my best interest, and letting my credit score take care of itself. It isn't something people should obsess over.
I closed my AmEX Delta Platinum card because they ruled against me on a dispute that was for about $1.80. OK - fine. Fraudulent charge, but whatever. I paid the $1.80 and then closed the card. AmEX tried to keep me, but I told them where they could stick their card and didn't look back. Couldn't care less about lopping a 5 year old card with $25K limit off my report.
We have both closed a number of other cards because we just didn't feel like we needed or wanted them and didn't want to pay their annual fee. Our FICO scores are still over 830.
The only card I keep around even though I don't use and would never use it is our AlaskaUSA Visa card with a crappy $2500 limit. We've had it for 17 years and is a true "joint" card, which is hard to get any more.
Summary: worry less about your credit score and manipulating it, and concentrate on paying your bills on-time. The score will take care of itself (;
