Is it okay to cancel a 2 year old card and open a new one for the 1 year - 0% interest?

Question

I currently have a 2 year old visa and an 8 year old discover card. I opened the visa credit card to use during a vacation. The card had one year of 0% interest. That allowed me to pay off the vacation without any interest. Since then I have rarely used the card and it now has a zero balance. It now has a terrible rate. I am interested in doing the same thing again for another vacation. I would like to cancel the visa that I have and open an new one for the 0% intro rate. Will that have a negative impact on my credit? Thanks!

Answer 1

anytime you cancel or open a new card - there is some sort of negative impact on your credit ( -5 maybe) Personally, I would open up the new card(can't resist saving money!! I'd do the same) - but, I would just keep the other card - put it away in case of an emergency - don't close it -

Answer 2

I agree more with the 2nd poster reason being that credit is not designed to be opened up to take advantage of interest rates. Anytime that you do apply for credit, you lose up to 5 points whether you're approved or not, and it will take roughly a year to recover those points and your score to start reflecting the recently added account. Now if you decide to cancel the card, you only negate the payment history you've established, but you also decrease the available credit as well, and just becuase you apply for another low interest card, doesn't guarantee that you'll get approved if at all with the same or higher credit line. And even though you cancel the most recent card that you have out the 2, you still shorten the average age of your credit accounts and number of open trade lines, which are all important in building credit. The poster that said it's more important to have low interest than good credit, gave you bad information. In order to get the best interest rates is to have good credit, and opening up credit left and right for the interest, isn't the way to do it.

Answer 3

Closing your old account and applying for a new 0% APR credit card will have a slightly negative impact on your credit score. But I would worry about it too much... it's only short-term. Within a year or so, you should gain back any points you lost. To me, it seems worth it if you're going to save lots of money on interest charges.

You can find a complete list of 0% APR credit cards here:

http://www.asapcreditcard.com/0-apr.html

Hope this helps. GOOD LUCK!

Answer 4

This is my personal opinion:

Yes!!!! I think its much more important to have a good credit card and to pay low interest rates, than it is to worry so much about one's credit rating and whether it goes down by a point because a credit card is cancelled.

The whole credit evaluation system is flawed. If the system is going to lower people's rating because the cut in half a bad credit card, then I say don't worry about your rating so much. Just pay your bills, have the credit cards you want to have, and always pay off the highest interest rate debt first.

Answer 5

I agree with the second poster as far as she goes.

You need to continue to use the other cards every month for every day things like food and gas, just be sure to never exceed 30% of your credit limit in any given month and pay them off in full every month before the due date.

This will show continued payment history and avoide interest charges.

I have done this with 2 credit cards for the last 2 years and it has raised my score over 150-points.