Once a credit card is paid, you can't count on its staying on your CR after about 6 months. A long history of credit is "so important". You don't want your older CC accounts to drop off of your credit report because that decreases the length of time you have had credit and would hurt your score (and that can happen even if old baddies drop off). To keep each of these CC's on your credit report as a good item after you pay them, make a small charge to each about every 6 months. If you pay it off before it is billed there are advantages. It still shows as a card with a zero balance on your CR which keeps your % utilization down. If you have balances on 2 of 4 cards that's 50% utilization of your accounts, and the lower the percent the better it is for your score. This is a different % utilization -- the CB's also consider the percent of the CL used on each CC. Also, if you pay the cards off this way, they can't even charge you the minimum fc, which they could charge you if you kept even a small balance on the account all the time.