Is this bad for credit?
I moved all my money to Bank of America and still have 3 open and active credit cards with 3 different companies with no balance on them. If I cancel them and keep the newest one open, does this hurt my credit score?
no it will help it.
closing an aged credit card will hurt your score a bit.
you don’t want too many open lines of credit. otherwise you’ll be seen as “over extending” yourself.
You want 5 to 7 lines of credit at all times. Make sure its current and you don’t have charge off’s. Keep your oldest card around, and don’t use it. Cancel the other two.
Ok thank you.
I have one that I have had for years which I think I am going to keep open then and then cancel the newer 2.
Correct.
Just make sure you have enough open lines to cancel them. If all you have is credit cars and no mortgage or auto loans, private or student loans and you cancel them all to only have one open line of credit… you’re fucked.
I would maybe close the worst one and keep the others open… it’s good to be diversified in credit cards so you have options.
Canceling older lines of credit will negatively impact your score. Old = more better.
Oh shit. Good point. I don’t have any home or auto loans. Just student loans which are in repayment.
I will keep my new one and the really old one I guess based on all the info here.
worst as in?
There is some pretty good information in this thread.
I’d like to just clarify one thing:
Your “age of credit” is not determined by your oldest open trade line. It can be determined by a closed account also.
worst as in undesirable for use compared to the other two… can be measured by interest rate or rewards or credit limit… whatever you value really.
Ya I am really impressed. Thanks to everyone.
Ah ok. Just checking.
Generally, it’s not a good idea to close your CC account, especially the older ones. Credit score is calculated based on the age of open/closed accounts. If you have more accounts open, you have greater available credit-to-debt ratio. When you close your account(s), this ratio will change and may potentially affect your credit history in a bad way.
It’s even worst if you close an account with balance greater than your credit limit.
In my opinion, it would be simpler if you pay off the balance and not use the card (put the cards inside a safebox).
If you have a lot of zero balance credit cards that you no longer use, it may be a good idea to close these accounts for safety purposes (hackers, etc). However, still, your available credit-to-debt ratio will be affected.
That doesn’t mean that having longer good standing accounts doesn’t help your credit or tht closing older accounts doesn’t hurt it.
My big worry is I wanted to lmit the amount of accounts I have. With all the identity theft and I do all my banking online, I don’t want to forget about these and find out someone got a hold of the number or something. Probably will destory the cards tho.
this is precisely one of my reasoning as well.
that’s the reason why I only use one or maybe two active credit cards and keep the other one zero balance. I usually check the account every month, just to make sure that everything zero (CC website, online service).
I also make use of the free credit history service. Since there are three credit bureaus, I check one bureau every 3-4 months.
If you suspect that one or more of your credit card account(s) is/are “exposed”, you may request a new card with newly generated number. This way, you deactivate those “exposed” numbers.
That’s not what I said nor implied.
Ah ok. Ill look into this. Thanks.
Anyway, you want to tell the CC’s customer service that you want a new card with a new number. You do NOT tell them that you lost the card (or stolen). From my experience, the lost/stolen card history will still be there in your credit history.
Another thing, logically, after getting your new card, you want to zero the balance and store it in a safe place. I am thinking of opening a safety deposit box in a local bank. It only costs around $25 for 1 year (12 months).
This way, you’ll have more CC accounts with zero balance. This should theoretically increase your available credit-to-debt ratio in a good way.
You might as well read my stickied credit repair thread. It has a lot of links and information that would probably help you.