Daedalus

No, I'm not advocating going out and running up a bunch of debt.

I received a letter a couple days ago from Chase. I have been reading about credit lines being slashed left and right, and interest rates going up. I don't have a problem with that personally. To my surprise, the letter stated that because my credit card had not been used in 2 years, they had closed the account. WHOA! I go online, log in to my account, and make a polite and reasonable request for them to keep the account open. I have also read about such requests being granted. NOPE. Within 8 hours I received a short reply that said the account was already closed. Done deal, no alternatives.

I have had this account for 13 years. It is 4 years older than my next oldest account, and represented about 1/3 of my total credit line. In case you're not aware, your FICO score is based on both the age of your credit lines and the total amount of credit you have. I have a credit monitoring service. In about 3 months the results of this will be reflected, and I will post an update.

So keep those card accounts open. If you haven't charged anything on some in a while, make use of them, buy something small, then pay them off immediately.