Does anyone know of credit cards that never close due to inactivity? I was looking at my credit report and seeing discover cards that I haven’t used in 12 years are still active and helping my credit report. I used to have a sears card on there that was 30+ years old. I was thinking it would be nice to stack these types of cards up over the long run to boost scores.
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Citi seems to leave open but then close immediately if they ever “touch” the inactive account. Such as :requesting replacement cards or just asking anything on the phone that entails thempulling up the account.
A relative’s 25+yr Sears (Citi) was closed for inactivity within a few weeks of requesting replacement cards (so that they could make a purchase and keep it active) and adding authorized user, after it had been inactive for probably over 10 years. I also had one of my own cards closed for inactivity within a week of asking on the phone when it was auto-converted from a different branded card (since citi has the 24 open/close stipulation for bonuses).
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Fidelity. I haven’t used mine since 2011 when it was AMEX. They changed over to Visa a little while back.
FWIW I have mostly credit union credit cards and all of them have specific periods at which they close credit cards after inactivity. Most of them are six months, but one is one year. One of them sent me a notice after six months that they would close the card if I didn’t use it, so I used it and use it ( and the others) once every six months. Curiously enough, that one has given me unsolicited credit limit increases, despite my charging only $1.00 or so every six months.
Commercial bank cards I have do specify inactivity closing dates, but I expect they might close the cards after a year or two.
IME local credit union CCs often don’t require activity if the deposit accounts aren’t inactive.
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Good point. The credit unions where you have active deposit accounts usually do not require credit card activity to keep them open. I have active accounts with only 2. At one point, I didn’t use one credit card for about five years. That was Alliant – when they came out with the 3% one year deal I upgraded it and started using it again.
With five other credit unions I have only the $5 in savings and credit card accounts.
Seems like a waste time. If you don’t already have such accounts open, then opening them without some kind of amazing bonus is a waste of inquiry (each hard inquiry has an opportunity cost, which to me is at least $400 these days), and it would actually lower your score while the account ages.
I’m pretty sure you can get 850 (FICO '08) with an average age of accounts of about 8 or 9 years. There’s no “boost” after that.
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