Question about closing credit cards...
I just requested my credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com, and it got me to thinking about my credit cards. While I have heard two schools of thought, I figured I would post it here and see what happens.
(By the way, you can request your credit report for free once a year, so go do that if you want to! I had been having problems for the past couple of years reporting my FICO score, and finally figured out that the account my father has was hitting my credit. I thought someone had pretended to be me and opened it!)
Anyway, I have been arguing with both my father and Lilo at work. I have opened accounts, and though they are empty, they have been sitting there for the past couple of months or years. My father says to close them; Lilo says to not charge anything and keep them open, or else it'll affect my score.
I have been finding conflicting literature. Here's one of the sites I located.
The cards I want to close are a Shell card and a department store card. I've never charged anything to the Shell card, and the other one, I was forced into applying when I wanted to buy my bed. I've since paid it off.
Anybody have any ideas? Lord knows I'm a bit on the confuzzled side...
... and just want to make good decisions, like everybody else here!
(cross-posted to moneydummies)
(By the way, you can request your credit report for free once a year, so go do that if you want to! I had been having problems for the past couple of years reporting my FICO score, and finally figured out that the account my father has was hitting my credit. I thought someone had pretended to be me and opened it!)
Anyway, I have been arguing with both my father and Lilo at work. I have opened accounts, and though they are empty, they have been sitting there for the past couple of months or years. My father says to close them; Lilo says to not charge anything and keep them open, or else it'll affect my score.
I have been finding conflicting literature. Here's one of the sites I located.
The cards I want to close are a Shell card and a department store card. I've never charged anything to the Shell card, and the other one, I was forced into applying when I wanted to buy my bed. I've since paid it off.
Anybody have any ideas? Lord knows I'm a bit on the confuzzled side...
... and just want to make good decisions, like everybody else here!
(cross-posted to moneydummies)