Chosen by Asker

Closing an account does not always hurt your credit. In many cases, it helps your credit. Closing your oldest account usually hurts your credit, due to the resulting decrease in the age of your credit history. Closing newer accounts will often help your credit, especially if they have very low credit limits, which most department store accounts do.

by StephenWeinstein

1 month ago

Asker's Rating: 

Is it better to close credit accounts with department stores or leave them open? Close them. If they are not open then fraud artists can not get things charged to your account. I suggest you have two credit cards, a primary and a back-up. Both should be with no annual fee. A card with cash back is better than points etc. The back-up is to use if your primary card becomes unattractive and you need to replace it.

by Douglas L- 1 month ago

Leave them open. Length of credit history is 15% of your fico. You will also be lower the total of avaialable balances you have. /

by Judy- 1 month ago

Mixed answer. A card with a high limit or a long history is probably worth keeping open and using once in a while. Closing it will hurt. Having a large number of cards hurts. The best credit risks have 2 or 3 cards. More than that hurts a little with each account. A large number of accounts that actually have balances is even worse.

by Ted- 1 month ago

It's better to leave the cards open and build your length of credit. As long as you dont have balances on them it shouldnt hurt your credit. Also, you should only utilize something like 5-7% of your available revolving balance to keep your fico score up so leaving the cards open will help will help if you even have a small balance on your primary card.

by Amy- 1 month ago