Although it goes against general credit advice, in certain circumstances closing a credit card account is necessary. A credit card can be canceled without harming your credit score—paying off your balances first is key. Closing a credit card will not impact your credit history, which factors into your score.
In general, it's best to keep unused credit cards open so that you benefit from a longer average credit history and a larger amount of available credit. Credit scoring models reward you for having long-standing credit accounts, and for using only a small portion of your credit limit.
To make sure closing one card doesn't impact your score, pay off balances on all other cards. If you have zero balances, your credit utilization rate is zero, and won't be impacted by the loss of a balance. However, experts say this step may be unnecessary for most people.
While it might seem like holding fewer credit cards could help your credit, losing the available credit limit on the closed account can increase your utilization rate, which can hurt credit scores. If you're considering closing a bank account, however, be assured that it will have no direct effect on your credit.
Closing a credit card account can hurt your score by increasing your credit utilization ratio if you carry balances on other cards. But the account will stay on your credit report for 7-10 years, and it will continue to factor into your length of credit history.
Although it goes against general credit advice, in certain circumstances closing a credit card account is necessary. A credit card can be canceled without harming your credit score—paying off your balances first is key. Closing a credit card will not impact your credit history, which factors into your score.
“Having a zero balance helps to lower your overall utilization rate; however, if you leave a card with a zero balance for too long, the issuer may close your account, which would negatively affect your score by reducing your average age of accounts.”
Close no more than one credit card every six months, McClary says. "You want to be very careful about how you do it," he says. "Understand that even if you don't close them all at once – you just take them one at a time – it's still going to have a negative impact on your credit score," he says. Updated on Oct.
If you don't use a credit card but are reluctant to close it because of the possible impact on your credit score, you still have choices: Call the issuer and ask to change to a card from the same issuer that is a better fit. You can ask to be downgraded to a card without a fee, for example.
Closing a card hurts the length of your credit
Having an inactive account shut down can hurt your length of credit history which impacts 15% of your score. If the card closed is one of your older credit cards, this can reduce the average age of your accounts which will lower your score.
Paying a closed or charged off account will not typically result in immediate improvement to your credit scores, but can help improve your scores over time.
There are several factors that make up your credit score, and paying off debt does not positively affect all of them. Paying off debt may lower your credit score if it changes your credit mix, credit utilization or average account age.
Here are some of the fastest ways to increase your credit score:
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