Close accounts or keep open?

socks_uk

I'm sure it's been asked many times before but searching 'close accounts' brings up many subjects.
I successfully made a 0% balance transfer back in August and, as of yet, I haven't closed the original account and it is still open with a zero balance and £3000 available credit.
Should I close the account or keep it open?  I am determined to be debt-free by 60 and I am actually on track to be debt-free by 58 (and a half!) so I will not be spending on the card. 
Does it really affect my credit score?  (Experian 999, Clearscore 478)  

[Deleted User]

As always , it depends.  If you have several other cards that you're using regularly, you may want to close it, but there's rarely any need to.

Yes, it will affect your scores but no one will care about that as CRA credit scores aren't used for credit decisioning, or anything else.

femalemonarchfemalecanine

very much up to you; depends if you want to keep it, which if you want credit in future might be a good idea to use it and pay it off regularly. If you close it, your score may well go down or up - and it does that even if nothing changes, but as zx81 says, it doesn't matter

Fighter1986

In my experience having at least one line of credit open and unused on your credit file has more of a positive effect than having all of your open lines of credit carrying a balance.

Having a line of credit available to you but not being used is a sign of non-dependance on credit, wheras carrying a balance on all your available lines of credit can be seen as debt stress. 

socks_uk

Thank you for your replies.  I do have 3 other cards which I owe £3342 of the £7300 credit but I'll maybe keep the zero balance card until I have paid off one of the others, which should be around 6 months time.

[Deleted User]

If you're carrying debt on your other cards, then you definitely want to keep this one open.  Your limits are also very low, so having cards closed won't be a good look.

Use it for your regular spend but make sure you clear it in full each month.