kdm31091 wrote:I think generally people worry too much about closing accounts. Backdated or not, you still are going to take ZERO hit for the next ten years, in terms of AAOA.
Yes, ten years from now, the account will fall off and potentially knock your AAOA down some (although your other acounts will be 10 years older, too). However, AAOA, while important, is only 15% of scoring. So it's not like your score will plummet from 800 to 500 because of something like this.
Beyond that, the cards are actually costing you money, so year over year, you are paying to prevent a potentially small score impact an entire decade from now. A decade. Think about where you were in March 2006. Probably feels like forever ago, right? Because it was! 10 years is a long time in the future to be worrying about, IMO. You may not even care much about this sort of thing 10 years from now. Interest in "hobbies" like credit card rewards tends to wax and wane over time.
I've always just closed accounts pretty much when I felt like it and to date, no major score changes because of it.
Also, on the first page, the note about the accounts no longer aging is incorrect. They will age, even if closed, for the next 10 years.
Yeah but apart from average age, don't they also take into account the age of your oldest account? I believe these are reporting as his oldest accounts.