Increasingly, your credit score is being used for purposes other than approving loan requests. You score might be used to evaluate how much you’ll pay for auto and homeowner’s insurance; it may even affect your employment prospects.
Therefore, you should try to keep your score as high as possible, even if you don’t intend to borrow money. Ironically, one trap to avoid is closing credit card accounts you no longer use. Such a move probably will lower your score.
In particular, you should not close out cards you’ve had for a long time. They may represent the oldest credit you have so removing them from your file would shorten your credit history, dropping your credit score.
If you’re carrying balances on other credit cards, canceling cards you don’t use also could hurt your score. That would increase your outstanding debt, as a percentage of available credit, reducing your score.
The best strategy? Use each of your cards at some point during the year. Then pay the balance in full and on time.
