Too many credit cards with 0 balances that I never use, should I close some of them?

[Anonymous]

guys please give me your advice on what i should do about all my credit cards. heres a list of the cards i have that are 0 balances, and i never use them (most of them i havent used in over a year to 1.5 year):

Best Buy - 2500 limit
Ebay master - 1k limit
New egg - 1k limit
Sam Ash Music - 1200 limit

These are all store cards except the ebay one i think because its a mastercard. the other dont have logos. They certainly help keep my util lower. what should i do? my plan was to never use them anymore after i paid them off which i did a long time ago, then just let them close automatically after years of no use. i really dont have the desire to ever use them again. suggestions?. heres my cards that do carry balances:

cap1 quicksilver: 4500/5k
Penfed credit card: 600/1k

[Anonymous]

Hard to advise you without knowing the answers to a few more questions:

(1)  What other cards do you have besides these?  Can you tell us the name of each card, the current balance, and the credit limit?

(2)  Are the four cards that you have not used in a long time all store cards?  A store card is a card that can only be used at that store.  If there is a Visa, MC, Discover, or Amex on a card, it is not a store card.

(3)  If you have CC debt on one or more of your other cards, how easy would it be to pay it off?  Could you pay it off in the next week or two if you wanted to?

[Anonymous]

please see my revised original post. and i definitely wont be able to pay the 2 others cards off for another few months (maybe 4 to 5).

[Anonymous]

I would keep all four of hem open until you have paid all of your other cards off entirely. 

After you have paid off all your CC debt, it's fine to close the store cards but I would keep the card with the Mastercard logo open.  There's a scoring advantage to having three cards vs. only two.

While you are paying off your debt I would always pay at least the minimum payment plus $2 on each card.  Then push most of your money at the card with the highest utilization.  Your goal should be to get both cards at under 48% utilizatioin, and then adopt whatever paydown strategy is easiest for you. 

[Anonymous]

Another important question that I'd add to the list posed by CGID back in Post 2 would be the age of the cards you're not using and considering relative to the age of the cards that you do currently use.  If one of your store cards is several years older than your oldest actively used card that you don't plan on closing, it may be worth throwing a swipe on that store card every 6 months or so just to keep it alive and protecting your AoOA from dropping a chunk at some point in the future.

[ChessChik47]

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@Anonymous wrote:
guys please give me your advice on what i should do about all my credit cards. heres a list of the cards i have that are 0 balances, and i never use them (most of them i havent used in over a year to 1.5 year):

Best Buy - 2500 limit
Ebay master - 1k limit
New egg - 1k limit
Sam Ash Music - 1200 limit

These are all store cards except the ebay one i think because its a mastercard. the other dont have logos. They certainly help keep my util lower. what should i do? my plan was to never use them anymore after i paid them off which i did a long time ago, then just let them close automatically after years of no use. i really dont have the desire to ever use them again. suggestions?. heres my cards that do carry balances:

cap1 quicksilver: 4500/5k
Penfed credit card: 600/1k

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Hi OP, if these 6 cards are all of your credit cards and you have $5100 out of $6000 used on the two cards you plan to keep open, closing the 4 store cards will kill your overall utilization (your cards are considered maxed out).  If you have other cards that you'll be keeping open that have zero balance on them and will help your utilization then ignore my previous sentence.  Just want to make sure you're not about to tank your score by potentially closing the store cards prematurely.

[Anonymous]

yes these are all the credit i have. i guess it would be wise to not close the inactive cards even though i do t use them.

about how many years does it take of inactivity before most creditors close the accounts?

[ChessChik47]

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@Anonymous wrote:
yes these are all the credit i have. i guess it would be wise to not close the inactive cards even though i do t use them.

about how many years does it take of inactivity before most creditors close the accounts?

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Depends on the issuer...to be on the safe side, I recommend you using the cards for a small purchase, let it report, and then PIF to show some activity to make sure they don't get closed on you.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous
about how many years does it take of inactivity before most creditors close the accounts?

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It's very lender-specific.  Some take AA as early as 6 months or so, many in the 1-2 year range, then it goes up from there.  There are some reports of people throwing a card in the SD for a decade or so and they find out years later that it's still open even though it hasn't been used.  Since 6 months is generally accepted as being "good enough" to avoid AA even from the most volatile creditors, that's the time frame that's usually recommended as a minimum for a swipe on this forum if your goal is to keep a card alive. 

[Anonymous]

You should certainly give the card with the MC logo a swipe ASAP.  That's because it costs you nothing.  In modern life it is not possible to survive without wanting a loaf of bread, a Big Mac, a tank of gas, etc.  You can even put a cell phone bill or Netflix on a mastercard. 

The other three store cards are different animals.  Here our OP may simply have nothing from these stores that he actually wants or needs.  In such a case buying something just to keep the card active involves a trip (the headache and time of driving to the store) and what is in effect a fee (the price of the item he doesn't actually want).

Since our OP plans to have all of his CC debt paid off in the next 8 months, he may choose to leave those three cards alone.  Regardless I would certainly close them as soon as he gets his other three cards at under 9% each.