Account Clean-up

[Anonymous]

Hi All. New to the site and just recently started trying to "rebuild" an already "ok" credit. I have a few questions.

Below are all of my accounts. I would love to close all of the store cards and maybe the Capital One QS. Do you think this will drop my score by a lot? I just hate having a bunch of random accounts open that I do not use. 

12/27/2017 - Discover IT: $3.5K

09/25/2017 - Chase Slate: $3.8K

05/07/2017 - Amex BCE: $20K (This just recently went up from $14.5K)

02/29/2017 - Chase United: $5K

02/17/2016 - Kohls Store Card: $700

11/30/2015 - SYNCB/Amazon Store Card: $2.1K

10/12/2014 - SYNCB/JC Penney: $300

09/03/2015 - Best Buy Store Card: $1K

02/26/2015 - SYNCB/Lumber Liquidators: $1K

06/15/2015 - My Place: $550

05/18/2014 - SYNCB/Speeys: $2K

11/22/2013 - Macy's Store Card: $900

01/13/2013 - Capital One QS: $1K

Thanks in advance for any info provided!

[Anonymous]

Is that a Quicksilver or a QuicksilverOne?

Are any of your Synchrony accounts a Mastercard/Visa branded card?  If not, do you shop at those stores?  If not, you probably dont need those accounts.  Only reason to keep a Synchrony store account you arent actively using at that store is if you have some kinda rewards on purchases elsewhere (like the walmart mastercard 1 percent cashback)

Most of the cards you listed do not "upgrade" to open loop cards anyway, in fact the only one you have is the Best Buy, and I believe the store cards have different prefixes than needed for the Visa version, which means if you wanted the Visa it would be a new account.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply! It is a Quicksilver One. No, none of the Synchrony are Mastercard/Visa and I do not really shop at any of the stores. Most, if not all of those were opened for the "30% off" when opening. Which in hindsight may not be a good idea. I am just afraid to close them since they are keeping my credit age a bit higher. I would hate to drop my credit score back down. 

[CH-7-Mission-Accomplished]

Are the accounts all at zero balance except perhaps this month's charges?   Do you always pay in full?   If there is no utilization to worry about and you still have five or more revolving accounts, close those store accounts.   Do you not shop at Amazon?   I do every day and I love that account because you get 5% cash back.   That's the only store card I like.

[Anonymous]

0 balances across the board except my Chase slate. Amazon would be the only store car I keep open. I order from them weekly. You don't think the age of credit will crush my score? I thinks it's only at 3.8 years right now.

[CH-7-Mission-Accomplished]

Closing won't affect your AAoA.   The closed accounts still count and will continue to age for 10 more years before they drop off.   So open or closed counts the sme for age.

[Anonymous]

Wow now I feel dumb. Ok awesome. I will look to close them then.

[Anonymous]

Great advice from everyone else.

You are contemplating closing your oldest card, the Cap One QS (01/13/2013).  If you close all store cards plus the Cap One, your oldest open card will be your Chase United (02/29/2017).  This means that, several years from now, when your closed accounts fall off, your Age of Oldest Account will drop by a little over 4 years.

Age of Oldest is a factor different from Average Age of Accounts.  When your Age of Oldest drops by four it will affect your score -- perhaps not by much, but certainly by some.  For that reason its worth considering sock-drawering the Cap One card.  Keep it open for at least the next few years, taking it out once every six months to buy a gallon of milk (or whatever).

It will help your AAoA as well to have in ten years time an extra 14 year old account (in addition to the more significant help to your Age of oldest). 

All that said, it isn't a terrible idea if you decide to close it either. 

I do like the idea of closing all or almost all of your store cards.  A pure store card (no MasterCard or Visa or similar logo on it) is considered a bad thing by the scoring models used by the insurance industry.  Closing your store cards now is a good plan IMO.

[Anonymous]

Great! Thanks for jumping in here. I am still new to all of the background rules so the info was extremely helpful. 

[Revelate]

Personally I wouldn't close the Cap 1 card, then again a $39 AF is pretty trivial to me personally to keep my oldest tradeline open... though I'd try to convert it to a standard QS TBH but I don't know if that's possible or not.

I've recently gotten clean on 2 of 3 bureaus, and a prominent reason code complains about my revolving history explicitly.  We don't have good data around this one at all, because of MF's unfortunate rationale to suppress high scoring individuals' reason codes; however, as a result of that, don't know if it's calculating on open or closed or both.

Because of this, I recommend keeping what I've termed as "anchor" tradeline(s); for example, I have 3 tradelines (more than I rationally need) from my original year building which I really don't do much with: BOFA, DCU secured, and Amex Zync.  I'm going to try to keep these accounts until they take them away from me, so I occasionally drop charges on them, and go on with life.  There is a $25 AF on the Zync but /shrug, I spend more than that at a restaurant sometimes so it's lost in the margins for me.

Hard to say whether the additional 4 years will matter, though as CGID suggests AOOA will be factored but it's something of a wash... but someday I may need to leverage my credit hardcore, and at that point having as pretty a file as possible will be nothing but goodness.