Recently took advantage of a discount to sign up for a penny's card when we were purchasing blinds for our house. Have since paid off the line of credit and I'm debating on closing the card as it lowers the average age of my accounts.

There is no annual fee or any other reason to not keep it open, but it's just another account sitting out there that I'll never use and someone could exploit.

So texags... what would you do... close it or keep it open?

Leave it open.

Thanks. That's the piece I wasn't sure about. When I check my credit score it suggests only open accounts are a factor in the age of my credit as it only lists open accounts and their age. Makes sense to keep it open if the age score is determined off both open and closed accounts.

Is your credit score not great? Assuming you have a good history and a couple of cards that you've had for years with a decent amount of available credit, closing a single card that was only open for a month won't have much of an impact. Unless you're buying a house soon or something, I would just close the account and move on. If you credit sucks and you need the extra boost, though, then leave it open.

I have learned that after all the credit problems, the Great Recession, and the mortgage crisis unless if is negatively affecting your credit just leave it open. If you leave it open long enough with no activity and no communication from you they will likely close it in several years from now.

I opened a gas card when I was in college to build credit as I had one credit card. I used the card once a month in college, but once I graduated and got other cards I used those due to cash back/rewards programs. I wasn't super attached to the card so I forgot to use it and eventually they closed my account.

Now I make sure that any card I have that I might not use as often get setup as my auto renewal card and my Netflix, Eztag and other random stuff gets charged there so it it's $15-75 charged monthly and is active.

I have (had) two 'store' cards besides the gas card. One is a clothing retailer I don't frequent very often. I just realized they closed the account two months ago when I was looking at my credit report earlier this month. It wasn't a high limit and I got the card again when I was young to build credit so not that big of a deal.

I have one store card left with Sears from an appliance purchase 3-4 years ago. I assume unless I make another purchase in a year or two they will close the account.

I guess what I'm saying is unless you need to close the account for some reason if the account goes dormant for however long they are likely to close your account for you. I think this looks better as you can get a longer age on your credit and you don't see a bunch of accounts opened and then closed a short while later. Don't know if that is the right philosophy, but it's what I am doing.

All the branded accounts (Amex, Discover, MasterCard, Visa), you can use for anything and keep open and active fairly easily. It's the store cards that give me trouble as they don't really promote brand loyalty anymore, so I don't have a problem with them closing my account. Unless I'm financing a large purchase at 0% interest I doubt I'll ever open another store credit account.

Score is fine at around 800+ . Just want to make sure it stays that way. Noticed that in my age of accounts the Penny's line of credit stood out as all the others range between 19 and 5 years and then Penny's at 6 months.. seeing how only open accounts were listed I just assumed only open accounts factor into this piece. But alas as texags knows stuff, now my understanding of what factors into the average account age has been corrected.