Threshold for keeping a card active/reporting

[Anonymous]

I understand that cards go into an inactivity state after consecutive months of no activity and this state can adversely affect my score. What constitutes 'activity' and what constitutes 'reporting'?

I have four credit cards, two I actively use monthly. I've never carried a balance. The other two cards I no longer use regularly because they give low rewards. Two months ago I started making $0.01 purchases on the two less-often used cards with the thinking that this would show purchase and payment activity to the lenders and score agencies.

What I'm worried about is: is $0.01 an insignificant amount for card 'activity'? for credit agency 'reporting'?

Is this practice the best, pro-score way to handle these two cards? I don't want to close one of the cards because it is my first card and that would adversely affect my AAoA. 

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I understand that cards go into an inactivity state after consecutive months of no activity and this state can adversely affect my score. What constitutes 'activity' and what constitutes 'reporting'?

I have four credit cards, two I actively use monthly. I've never carried a balance. The other two cards I no longer use regularly because they give low rewards. Two months ago I started making $0.01 purchases on the two less-often used cards with the thinking that this would show purchase and payment activity to the lenders and score agencies.

What I'm worried about is: is $0.01 an insignificant amount for card 'activity'? for credit agency 'reporting'?

Is this practice the best, pro-score way to handle these two cards? I don't want to close one of the cards because it is my first card and that would adversely affect my AAoA. 

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Credit card companies can cancel your card at their discretion. They have no legal obligation of maintaining an account with you. A charge of $0.01 is a strong motivitating factor to close your account(s). It costs them more than that in processing no doubt. Usually minimum time for AA including closure is 6 months of non use but, trivial use that costs the CC money is worse than no use.

I would strongly recommend making purchases of at least $5. Purchases don't need to be every month. From a frequency of use perspective once every 3 months should be adequate. 

[sarge12]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I understand that cards go into an inactivity state after consecutive months of no activity and this state can adversely affect my score. What constitutes 'activity' and what constitutes 'reporting'?

I have four credit cards, two I actively use monthly. I've never carried a balance. The other two cards I no longer use regularly because they give low rewards. Two months ago I started making $0.01 purchases on the two less-often used cards with the thinking that this would show purchase and payment activity to the lenders and score agencies.

What I'm worried about is: is $0.01 an insignificant amount for card 'activity'? for credit agency 'reporting'?

Is this practice the best, pro-score way to handle these two cards? I don't want to close one of the cards because it is my first card and that would adversely affect my AAoA. 

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What in the world do you find for 1 cent....where do you charge it at. Bet that really makes the retailer who gets charged a swipe fee mad!

[Anonymous]

I have a couple of cards I never use for purchases... but they are so old I don't want to cancel them and lose out on AAoA. Therefore, I use one to pay my Netflix $9.99 and one to pay my Amazon Prime $10.99. Are there any cheap monthly bills you have like this that you could just set up on auto-pay?

[Anonymous]

I don't have anything small like that monthly. I could, every 3 months, get $5 Amazon Bucks on each of the cards. Thanks everyone for letting me know that $0.01 is worse than nothing at all!

[Anonymous]

Amazon has some $0.01 SIM cards with free shipping.

[righthererightnow]

I was told it was $5