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It’s a good idea to review your financial accounts every so often and make sure they’re still working for you — and this includes credit cards. Sometimes, a card issuer will make you do this by getting in touch if you haven’t used its card in a while. I recently got a notice in the mail from one of the issuers I have a card with, threatening me with cancellation of the card if I don’t use it in 30 days.

I want to keep this card, so I used it to buy myself a new set of coffee table coasters on Etsy, then immediately paid off the charge to keep the account active. Admittedly, I hadn’t used the card in quite some time. So why keep it? Here’s why.

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1. A long credit history

The credit card I’m trying to keep is the oldest of all of my current cards. I opened it way back in fall 2011, giving it 13 years of history on my credit report. I’ve never made a late payment on this card, and as such, it’s been contributing to my excellent credit score.

Hanging onto an old credit card that you don’t use much is often a slam dunk for your credit score. It increases the average age of your credit history, which accounts for 15% of your FICO® Score — the longer you’ve been using credit, the more evidence you can show a lender that you’re a responsible borrower who makes on-time payments.

So as long as that old credit card isn’t doing harm to your finances (by tempting you to overspend or by charging you an annual fee), consider hanging onto it. Me keeping this card is doing my finances no harm whatsoever.

2. A decent credit limit

When I was first approved for this old credit card, I didn’t have a very high credit limit — I don’t remember the specifics, but it was perhaps $1,000. But over the years, the issuer has raised my credit limit multiple times, and now I’m rocking a credit limit of $8,700 — not bad.

Having additional credit at my disposal also improves my credit score. It lowers my credit utilization ratio, which is the amount of credit I’m using relative to how much I have access to. Keeping this number low is one of the keys to good credit. Ideally, you should be using less than 30% of your available credit at any given time, and this factor accounts for 30% of your FICO® Score (easy to remember, right?).

I don’t carry a balance on any credit cards these days, but since card issuers report balances at different times during the month, my credit reports always say I have a balance across several cards. Having $8,700 in credit that I don’t use serves to lower my credit utilization ratio, even if I have charges on other cards at the time their balances are reported.

3. I may need it in the future

Finally, I’ve decided to hang onto this card because it could come in handy in the future. That $8,700 limit is fairly substantial, and if I needed to, say, finance a home repair, I could lean on this card. One of its features is that the issuer regularly offers lower APR promotional periods — one of its current offers is a 3.99% APR on new purchases, for example.

That could save me a lot of money on a big bill — 3.99% is a lower interest rate than I’d be likely to get on a personal loan, and it’s much lower than most credit cards’ regular APRs. In case you’re wondering, the average credit card interest rate across all accounts was 21.76% as of August 2024. A rate under 4% to finance a big purchase is nothing to sneeze at.

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I have no way of knowing what financial needs might come up for me in the future. And having a solid credit score will always benefit my bottom line, so I’m keeping this card. If you have an old card gathering dust, you might want to hang onto it, too.

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