I applied, and was approved, for the Capital One Quicksilver Card. It should be arriving shortly.
I've been looking to add a credit card to my "portfolio" for a few weeks. The Verve card is one of those designed for folks with bad credit (boo), and carries a fairly sizable annual fee ($96), plus a monthly maintenance fee ($6). Obviously, I don't want to pay these fees, which means this card will not be sticking around long-term. So I decided to try to find another card to replace it, so that I can maintain my credit limit/utilization.
The Quicksilver card is 0% until March 2016, with no balance transfer fees. Plus 1.5% back on all purchases. That's pretty exciting, I thought I was a ways away from being approved for anything with those kind of offers. $39 annual fee, which I am fine with. $500 credit limit.
Originally, I was going to transfer the balance from the Verve card onto this new card. I then realized that I have it scheduled to be paid off in 2 months anyway. I'm going to keep that plan, and transfer as much as I can from the Capital one Secured card to the QuickSilver. I have a fairly aggressive plan to pay that off as well, but if I can avoid accruing interest, why not.
I'm not sure if I should keep the Verve card open for another year, and suck up the fees. I'm very much in a credit re-building phase.
Option A: If I keep it open, I can keep utilization lower, have a higher available credit line, and the average age of my (now) 3 credit card accounts will be longer. I will pay $168 for this privilege in fees.
Option B: close it as soon as it is paid off (Sept), reduce available credit line by $500, and this will increase the utilization percent. This will also decrease the average age of my accounts. Would now be down to two cards. This will cost me nothing, but might not help my credit as much as I would like it to.
Thoughts? What would you do?
Any ever transferred a balance from one Cap One card to another that can give me some insight into the process?
Once the Cap One secured card is paid off (by the end of the year), I'll also be looking to replace that with a non-secured card so I can close that account and get my deposit back. Hopefully by that time, credit score will have gone up enough to get a non-crappy card (ha!) with a decent enough credit limit that I can maintain available credit/utilization, etc. I'm sure I'll be looking for thoughts on the who average age of accounts then too.
New Credit Card!
July 16th, 2015 at 04:14 pm
July 16th, 2015 at 04:58 pm 1437065916
I think I'd go with Option B.
July 16th, 2015 at 05:12 pm 1437066757
July 16th, 2015 at 05:15 pm 1437066901
I guess my real dilemma is that I don't know how much keeping the card open will actually help the score - if it's only by a few points, doesn't seem worth the expense and the hassle of maintaining the account.
July 16th, 2015 at 05:19 pm 1437067148
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/cancel-unused-cards
July 16th, 2015 at 05:45 pm 1437068756
July 18th, 2015 at 06:57 pm 1437245839
July 20th, 2015 at 09:30 pm 1437427852