Closing Your Credit Cards Can Hurt Your FICO Score

In recent months, the subject of “too many credit cards” has frequently arisen on blogs and forums. I have even seen a post title saying that closing a credit card will immediately boost your credit score by 10 points. I don’t know if this is true; a quick search on Google didn’t turn up any substantiating information.

I had always believed that if my accounts all showed up in “Excellent” standing on my credit report, that it would be a positive thing, and therefore kept old and unused accounts open. Now I am glad I haven’t acted hastily.

First of all, I currently have 4 credit cards (shared with my sister):

1. Old Navy Store Card
   Opened 2001, the earliest/oldest account on my credit history, never used
2. Bank of America Platinum Visa
   Opened 2004, unused since June 2006
3. American Express Blue Cash
   Opened 2006, primary card
4. Amazon Visa
   Opened 2008, used on Amazon.com where we do the bulk of our online shopping and wherever Amex isn’t accepted

I had seriously considered closing my Old Navy store card recently and also contemplated the Bank of America Visa, which I had been keeping around for emergencies. But, last night I happened on article at Bankrate.com “Closing credit card dings credit score” by Leslie McFadden, which tells us that there is actually no harm in keeping old and unused credit cards open, and that it could actually harm your future credit history to close them, and am really glad that I saw this article before I had done anything.

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