MF post regarding VS AAoA

MYTH: CLOSING YOUR CREDIT CARD ACCOUNTS CAN IMPROVE YOUR CREDIT SCORES. Fact: Closing credit cards does nothing to improve your credit scores and, in fact, can backfire and leave you with lower scores. When you close a credit card account, you lose the value of that card’s credit limit in the credit score calculation. The credit limit is an important component when determining a consumer’s “balance to limit” ratio. The balance to limit ratio measurement rewards consumers who have low credit card balances relative to their credit limits. If you close credit cards, especially those with large credit limits, you will likely cause your balance to limit ratio to go up. This can cause your score to go down, and down considerably in some extreme instances. Additionally, if you close credit card accounts the credit bureaus will eventually remove them from your credit reports. Even though it can take years for an account to be removed from your credit reports, once it is gone you will get no benefit from your responsible management of that account.

Myth: When you close a credit card or pay off a loan, you lose the value of the account’s age in your credit scores. Fact: As long as an account is on your credit reports it is considered by credit scoring systems, open or closed and with or without a balance. As such, if you were to close a credit card that was opened 10 years ago it would still be seen and measured as a 10 year old account. And, closed accounts continue to age so an account that was closed 3 years ago is 3 years older today. As such, closing accounts will not result in a reduction in your credit scores as a result of the loss of the value of the account’s age.