Closed accounts continue to age and be factored into your age of accounts for as long as they remain on your reports - which is generally ~10 years after the date of closure. It's when the closed account is finally removed years later that you may experience a drop in score if the difference in age is significant -- in your case, with 2 other cards around the same age, you may not have to worry about that much either.
It won't hurt your AAoA, but not for that reason. Closed accounts stay on your reports for up to 10 years and continue to contribute to aging metrics until they fall off. Whenever it does fall off, your AAoA would then be lower than it would have been if it had stayed open, b/c you would have one fewer account w/ an age greater than your average age. How much lower and whether it would have a scoring effect would depend on the ages of the other accounts reporting at that time.
@Repairman wrote:
@Slabenstein wrote:It won't hurt your AAoA, but not for that reason. Closed accounts stay on your reports for up to 10 years and continue to contribute to aging metrics until they fall off. Whenever it does fall off, your AAoA would then be lower than it would have been if it had stayed open, b/c you would have one fewer account w/ an age greater than your average age. How much lower and whether it would have a scoring effect would depend on the ages of the other accounts reporting at that time.
Right. Thanks. So, would you recommend I just keep the card and leave it alone instead of closing it? It's an old no AF rebuilder card that I haven't used at all in 2 years, and recently had its cl reduced by the creditor to $1500 due to lack of use. Should I just not bother closing it and keep it around?
It would depend on what the ages of your other cards are, what your plans for your profile are, and what your preferences are. If you have, e.g., three cards that are 10 years old and 7 cards that are < 2 years old there might be reason to keep it open long-term as a counterwieght. Similarly, if you plan to build a large card lineup, the more aged accounts you have the better so you can absorb the AAoA hits from the new accounts you open down the road. But an SD card does require a little bit of upkeep in that you have to keep an eye on it for fraud and you need to either remember to put maintenance charges on it or keep an eye on an autopayed recurring charge that you run through it. If it were me, with my profile and goals, I would probably close it, but the ages of my cards are pretty spread out, I don't have plans to ever have more than a handful of cards, and I don't enjoy managing very many cards, even in the sock drawer. The $1.5k CL would also probably bug me where I am now in my credit journey. But you'll need to look at your own case and see what purposes its age contribution might serve 10+ years from now and whether that's worth the bother of maintaining it in the meantime.