I have a credit card with a small bank in Hawaii that I opened back in my early 20s. It doesn’t really have great rewards, so I never use it. But I keep the account open because having nearly two decades of history keeps my credit report happy. Credit scores love long open lines of credit.
In fact, research shows that people with a perfect 850 FICO® Score have a very established credit history with the average age of their oldest account being 30 years old
That’s a loooong game being played.
Keeping old credit cards open does something powerful to your credit score
Two big credit score factors benefit directly from keeping old cards open: credit utilization and length of credit history.
Credit utilization — the percentage of your available credit you’re actually using — makes up about 30% of your FICO® Score. The more total credit you have available, the lower your utilization tends to be. An old card sitting mostly idle still contributes to that ceiling.
The average American has 3.9 credit cards. People with “perfect credit” have close to 5.8. More open accounts means more available credit, which means lower utilization, which means a better score.
And then there’s credit history length, which counts for 15% of your score. Your oldest active account is a great reason to hold onto your first credit card — especially if it carries no annual fee.
Pro tip: Add your kids or a family member as an authorized user on your oldest card. They could instantly inherit the account’s full history on their own credit report. If you have a card that’s been open for 15 or 20 years, that’s a powerful head start you can give to someone just starting out. I do this as part of my generational wealth strategy for my kids.
Three things to think through before committing to “forever”
Keeping a credit card open forever sounds simple. In practice, there are a few real-world curveballs worth knowing about.
1. Will the bank still exist in 30 years?
Genuine question — and one I’ve asked myself about my Hawaii card. Small regional banks and credit unions can merge, get acquired, or shut down. If your oldest card is with a tiny institution, it’s worth keeping an eye on. Big national issuers like Chase, Amex, and Bank of America are much safer long-term bets.
2. Annual fees can eat up your rewards
A card that made sense when you were spending $3,000 a month on it might not pencil out when it’s sitting in a drawer, unused. If a card carries a $95+ annual fee and you’re barely using it, the math stops working.
Most issuers will let you downgrade to a no-annual-fee version in the same card family. You keep the account age. You lose the fee. Win-win.
3. Inactive cards can get closed by the issuer
Card issuers can — and do — close accounts due to inactivity. When that happens, you lose the account history and the available credit cushion.
The fix is easy: put a small recurring charge on the card, like a streaming subscription or monthly utility bill. Or buy a $0.25 banana every six months. Just enough to show some activity on the account.
The bottom line
Generally speaking, the longer your credit card accounts stay open, the better off you are. More account age means a stronger credit history and a higher total credit limit. Both of those things keep your score happy and growing.
The only real traps to watch out for are paying annual fees on cards you’re not using, and letting a card go so dormant that your issuer force-closes it on you.
