After a BK7 5+ years ago, like everyone else, I started my rebuild with low-limit vulture cards. I juiced the rebuild with AU cards which resulted in a significant increase in available credit, AAoA, and AoOA. The vulture cards have all been dumped. I have 7 primary cards left - WF ($25K), Amex BCP ($15K), Disco ($10K), and Apple, Barclays, PenFed, and Venmo (all between $5K and $10K). Now I'm considering dumping all the AU accounts. Doing this would have the following effects:
Available credit: $146K -> $85K
AAoA: 4.2 -> 3.5
AoOA: 22.8 -> 11.1
I have a thick dirty file that's been fairly insensitive to changes in AZEO and utilization. For example, I've shuttled between AZEO and AZE5, and also between 2% and 12% overall utilization, without any appreciable effect on my scores.
What do the experts think? Will this hurt my score significantly?
Since your utilization ratio is low, I would be more concerned about the loss of age rather than overall credit limits. Perhaps keep the oldest AU card to preserve the AoOA?
@NYC_Fella wrote:After a BK7 5+ years ago, like everyone else, I started my rebuild with low-limit vulture cards. I juiced the rebuild with AU cards which resulted in a significant increase in available credit, AAoA, and AoOA. The vulture cards have all been dumped. I have 7 primary cards left - WF ($25K), Amex BCP ($15K), Disco ($10K), and Apple, Barclays, PenFed, and Venmo (all between $5K and $10K). Now I'm considering dumping all the AU accounts. Doing this would have the following effects:
Available credit: $146K -> $85K
AAoA: 4.2 -> 3.5
AoOA: 22.8 -> 11.1
I have a thick dirty file that's been fairly insensitive to changes in AZEO and utilization. For example, I've shuttled between AZEO and AZE5, and also between 2% and 12% overall utilization, without any appreciable effect on my scores.
What do the experts think? Will this hurt my score significantly?
You don't mention what the utilization is on the AU cards. If you can keep your utilization to 9% or less you shouldn't get hit too bad. But my advice would be take it slow. Do one card at a time and see what happens once it's no longer in the reports.
@SouthJamaica wrote:
You don't mention what the utilization is on the AU cards. If you can keep your utilization to 9% or less you shouldn't get hit too bad. But my advice would be take it slow. Do one card at a time and see what happens once it's no longer in the reports.
The AU utilization is negligible but is not entirely within my control month-to-month (which is another reason to dump them). Good advice about getting rid of one card at a time. Thanks.
I've toyed with the idea of dumping AU cards as well, since they are older, less lucrative cards in our cases. I've dropped one Synchrony Car Care card 3 years ago, but it still appears in our reports and continues to be updated on 1 of the CRA's. Even though you may dump an AU card, you may have to submit a dispute to remove it from your CRA reports.
Something else to think about is your mortgage scores. If I remember correctly, AU accounts may carry more weight for those older mortgage scores than on the newer Fico 8 scores. Can't remember the specifics, but I seem to remember AU counted like your own accounts on the mortgage scores for the most part and really helped (or hurt).
As mentioned earlier, try dropping the AU accounts one at a time focusing on keeping the better aged (or best % utilization) for last.
@NYC_Fella wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
You don't mention what the utilization is on the AU cards. If you can keep your utilization to 9% or less you shouldn't get hit too bad. But my advice would be take it slow. Do one card at a time and see what happens once it's no longer in the reports.The AU utilization is negligible but is not entirely within my control month-to-month (which is another reason to dump them). Good advice about getting rid of one card at a time. Thanks.
How many AU cards do you have?
I'd be inclined to close them, due to your much better accounts you have now, but the one-at-a-time plan makes sense.
@NRB525 wrote:How many AU cards do you have?
I have 4, of which 2 are Amex so they don't help with the aging metrics. I'm going to close those first.
If I am dropped as an AU (at my request), will the account continue to show up as a live account for some period? I want to dump some Amex AU cards but am concerned about the AU all-zero penalty if the cards are going to continue to show for a while with zero balances.
Should I perhaps leave a small balance on one of the accounts and pay in bits and pieces even after they are all closed, until they drop off my report?
@FinStar wrote:
Technically, they would have to be removed from your CRs if you want to pursue things where no AU accounts display under your reports. The process is a bit trivial with AmEx [AU] accounts because they're the most challenging to get removed based on some DPs that have floated around -- someone can chime in on any recent AmEx AU removal experiences to provide more perspective. Just keep in mind that accounts may linger on your CRs until they stop reporting altogether (i.e. no activity), but not all accounts necessarily 'drop off'. Some eventually get removed eventually, others will need to be addressed specifically with the CRAs.
I don't care if they'r reported as closed accounts. I just don't want them to be shown as open and reporting zero balances. I've been hurt by the AU all-zero penalty a couple of times.