Credit score - which card to close?

SuperHan

Anthorn wrote: »

You're looking at your credit history in the wrong way. Who say's it's almost perfect? You? In that case you must be loaning yourself the money or have your own credit card company and supplying yourself with a card.

It's not you or some CRA selling you a worthless credit score that matters. It's the lender viewing your credit history that matters and since most lenders are different from each other we try to have on our credit history a variety of different credit types. A lender which likes credit cards or a lender who likes loans or a lender that likes a mobile phone contract etc. etc. should all be covered. A credit history which doesn't have a settled loan however small, doesn't cut it.

Neither am I advocating paying interest or at least not very much interest. A loan which is settled however soon after opening it counts if it's on the credit history!

I'd say continue as you want and it has actually been a wasted exercise asking for advice. Follow the crowd and when you fail come back to this post and read it again.

All this will do is make your credit "score" better in Anthorn's eyes. I'm yet to see any evidence that getting a loan (and paying whatever interest and fees are related to that) will improve your chances of getting a mortgage.

I got my mortgage just fine without doing that, and with having only open credit cards at the time.

You need to remember that what Experian have said is just Experian's opinion. When you close one account, they may come up with a new negative that you only have one open credit card/you have low available credit. The mortgage provider may see closed accounts as a bad thing, and may prefer open and unused accounts.

It's a guessing game and the criteria will be different for different lenders. If you've paid everything off on time previously, have had credit and shown you can manage it and can afford the mortgage, I don't think you'll have any trouble at all.