Closing my oldest CC

[Trigga]

Hello , my oldest card to date is only 3yrs 6months old my other 3 cards are about 1 year old , i wanna close my oldest account becouse of the outrageous annual payments and 18 a month tacked on even if not used i have to pay the 18 dollars monthly ....was wondering how bad this would hurt my score if at all .. any input would be a great help ...

PS. Merry Christmas

[marty56]

I would close it.  Even if you do get a score hit, your score will recover after time but you will never get that money back.  Merry Christmas/Happy Festivus to you too.

[RobertEG]

Closed cards still count, as long as they dont delete it with the CRAs

[sdoonan]

AFAIK, any TL's will stay on record for 10 years before they drop off.

Sounds like an account you should close, especially if you don't use it.

[Trigga]

Thanks for the responses

[haulingthescoreup]

Read fused's "Closing Credit Cards" linked in my siggy.

As the others have said, the history should remain for 10 years and will be counted, whether an account is open or closed.

If the card's CL contributes significantly to your total CL, and you have balances reporting on other cards, you might take a hit via higher reported util. If you don't let balances report, or if they're minimal, you shouldn't be affected too much.

Another factor is that if you only have a few cards, and you close one, you're more vulnerable to the "too many accounts with balances" ding. So 2 CC's with balances out of four is half reporting, but 2 CC's with balances out of three is two-thirds reporting. Not a huge hit, and it can be turned around by making more cards report $0. (Use them, but pay them off before the statement posts.)

--hth

[Anonymous]

Like the others have said, open or closed the TL should remain on your reports for 10 years, contributing to your AAoA's till it falls off your reports, once it falls off in 10 years you may see a slight decrease in your AAoA's, that all depends on what you do from now to then.

The only way closing a CC can really hurt you, is if your util goes up because of losing that CC's CL.

But if it were me, I'd close that card just due to the fees associated with that card.

Best of Luck.

Happy Holidays.

ETA: HTSC, makes a good point that I always overlook, is the "Too many CC's reporting a balance ding" that is another way closing a CC can hurt you, that is if you are carrying balances on multiple cards, Thanks HTSC for refreshing my memory.

[Trigga]

Have one other question my oldest card is my 2nd highest credit limit card i have , i have 4 cards all together and the one im closeing is double the limit of the 2 out of the 3 cards i will be keeping open ....iw anna get a Kay Jewelers card in a few months maybe to get my GF a ring .....should i wait untill i try and get the Kay card before i close out my oldest card .....and also i keep my balance pretty low since reading these forms which has help me out alot ..and thank you all for all the great posts ! I try and pay in full every month before the statement is sent in to the creditBreau . Just trying to see if this could hurt my chances on getting a card with a higher limit if i close my oldest account out .

[haulingthescoreup]

I don't know that it would hurt by closing out your oldest account, but if it's your highest CL or nearly so, that might affect your future chances.

There are a lot of posts indicating that members get higher CL's when they already have a higher-CL CC. In other words, them that has, gets. If you have a lot of low-CL cards, it can be hard to get a higher CL with a new card.