My husband and I have been living off of credit cards due to a serious disability. We are now back at work and will start paying the cards down. We have $65,000 in credit and have used $63,000 of it on our major credit cards. We are now starting to clean up some problems on our credit reports to get our scores improved enough to buy a car. Here is my question. Over the last 20 years we have , on numerous occasions, taken advantage of the special offers from furniture stores and computer stores to purchase something for no interest if the loan is paid off in one year. These have always been paid on time. No problems. All of them have kept the accounts open, showing no balance, high credit limits, and always paid on time. Many of these are in places I moved away from and will never return to. In other words, I will never use these accounts again. Should we keep these accounts open, which may help our score by showing a lot of available credit? (They also show old accounts with excellent payment histories). Or, should we close them, which might make us more attractive to a lender because we will not have a lot of available credit left to spend? My problems that I have to clean up appear to be relatively mild - a collection that is not mine, some incorrect info, etc. My main purpose is to increase my score. I do not know what my score is (like everyone else, I can't seem to get it from Equifax) but suspect it is low based on my high ratio of credit used on my credit cards.
My guess is that you should close them so it does not appear that you have a lot of open credit. You've obviously used too much (an observation, not a criticism) and another creditor might be afraid to lend to you knowing that there is more available credit out there for you to utilize. Even if you close them, they will appear on your report showing the excellent payment history. But, I think you are asking the question as a scoring question. In other words, what do you do to maximize your credit score? Hopefully there is someone out there that can answer this question.
