How will cancelling my second credit card affect my score

[Anonymous]

So I have two cards, one for 11 months and one for 5 (I also have a current auto loan, but that's irrelevant to my question); if I cancel my second card, how will it affect my score? Both are low limit at 750 and 600 respectively. Will there be any score impact at all? Will my "average length of credit history" then be split between my single card and my auto loan? I plan on getting rid of my secondary card in a few months to apply for a more premium one.

[Anonymous]

If your second card doesn't have a fee and is not Credit One you can always upgrade the card if it's a card from a good bank. 11+5/2 = 8 month 11/1 = 11 month AAoA

[steel_string]

Closing a card will have no effect on your AAoA until it falls off in ten years. Whether it matters depends on your future credit activity. With such low limits, the bigger concern is utilization.

[Anonymous]

it won't  affect your credit age. good standing account will stay on your CRs and aged for 10 more years after your close it.

[Viva-LV]

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@Anonymous wrote:

If your second card doesn't have a fee and is not Credit One you can always upgrade the card if it's a card from a good bank. 11+5/2 = 8 month 11/1 = 11 month AAoA

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Agree 100%.  Consider keeping it with little or no balance; build up some history!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

So I have two cards, one for 11 months and one for 5 (I also have a current auto loan, but that's irrelevant to my question); if I cancel my second card, how will it affect my score? Both are low limit at 750 and 600 respectively. Will there be any score impact at all? Will my "average length of credit history" then be split between my single card and my auto loan? I plan on getting rid of my secondary card in a few months to apply for a more premium one.

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The thing that may be puzzling folks here is getting rid of a card so that you can apply for another one -- the "so that" reasoning.  This would make sense if people were only allowed to have two credit cards.  Or if there was a scoring advantage to only having two cards over three.

But actually three cards enables you to have a higher score than two.  So unless the card you are contemplating closing has a huge annual fee (or any monthly fee) you should keep it and apply for the third.  Closing cards you don't like is fine as long as the closures do not lower your total number of cards to below three.

[Anonymous]

OP, why do you want to get rid of the card in the first place?

[andydallas1]

ok, think a little longer timeframe.  If 3 years from opening the first card (to make the math easy I acted like you opened both cards at the same time)  you have keep those two cards open, and you apply for a third, you would still have (2@ 36 months, 1@0,  36+36+0/3 )) AAoA of  24 months when you get the third card.  If you closed the second card now and did the same thing, that AAoA would only be a l(1@ 6 months, 1 @ 36 months, 1@ 0 months)  about 14 months.    

[Anonymous]

Hi AndyD!  Actually, that turns out not to be true.  You are thinking that a card once closed stops aging.  But in fact it continues to age as long as it remains on the report.

Suppose I have three credit cards (no other accounts) which I open yesterday.  If I don't do any thing else, in nine years my AAoA will be 9.  But, if I close two of the three cards a week from now, then in nine years my AAoA will also be 9.  Those two closed accounts will be considered no different in that AAoA calculation than if they had been open the whole time.

Of course, when closed accounts fall of one's report (typically ten years after closing date) then that can affect your AAoA.

[Anonymous]

It's also worth nothing that some "fluff" software that comes along with free monitoring sites will suggest from their charts and graphs that your closed accounts are not factored into your AAoA, but as CGID said above they most certainly are for 10 years following their closure.