Does making a payment to a credit card keep the card open even if there has been no purchase? If so, one approach would be to make a $1.00 payment through your on-line banking.

I had this happen to me on my Virgin America card. if you want to keep it, I do suggest making a charge every now and then.

Many banks will not accept a payment if there is $0.00 balance.

This actually sounds like more work than just making a tiny purchase once in a while.

My understanding is that charging $5 per year will keep cards alive. Conventional wisdom says you should use the card for a small purchase once every six months just to be safe.

Cards that charge an annual fee shouldn't be at risk because the fee itself gives you activity every 12 months.

On a side note, while $5 is enough to keep a card active, it seems pointless to work so hard to minimize your use of one card. If you were to use it to make an actual, real-life purchase you intended to make anyway like a tank of gas or one trip to the grocery store, would it really kill you to give up a few points on one of your other cards?

A while back I had my Diners Club card as one of my cards in Apple Pay. I noticed that there was a $0.00 pending charge from "MasterCard" immediately after first trying to add it (and another once I got off the phone with them to verify my identity). I don't remember ever seeing that with my other issuers, but still, I wonder if the simple act of adding a card would keep the card active.

If not, you could always do a Starbucks app load after adding your card(s). There appears to be a $10 minimum for each load though so hopefully you either don't have to do that many of them or you really like Starbucks.

I have a simple (for me) plan. I have every long-kept card registered in a Rewards Network airline dining program (I belong to several of them). I typically use it for a less expensive dine. I don't sweat not earning something on the card because I earn much more from the dining program anyway on a qualified dine than I do from the card itself, no matter which card it is (unless it's a card where I'm working on the signup bonus minimum spend, that is).

For those that don't want to use a dining program, a similar approach might be to use the card for a smaller purchase at an airline shopping portal. You'll still earn the miles (maybe even a bonus) from the shopping portal itself, and again in some cases that may be more than you would have earned from another card anyway.

Was wondering best practices for keeping them going, i thought about using my paypal account to create a subscription for say $50 cents every 3 mth, however each account only allows i think 5 cards and i would not want to risk creating multiple paypal accounts

So keeping 5 cards going through paypal will work now i just need to take care of the other 5 i have, they all have pretty high CL so i would rather not cancel

Any methods that you all have in a sort of set and forget it type fashion

AceM,

merging with existing thread.

~moderator

First question is why you have 10 credit cards that you never use? If you are concerned about keeping the CL, why not combine CL across cards where possible (Since you have 10 "unused" cards, some of them must be with the same bank)?

I usually buy $1 amazon gift cards on the cards i use very infrequently.

For Average Age of Account purposes.

Just use any sort of reminder system to ping you once a year or once every 6 months of whatever, to take out your stack of cards. Then when doing groceries or whatever, charge one small item to each card (only one such card per visit), until you've gone through the whole stack. Then put the stack away until the next reminder.

Something like that is how everyone used to do it before online stuff. And it still works. It sounds like a whole lot more trouble to try to set up things to make it be 50 cents when 2.10 would probably matter just as little (to any other cards you need activity on for points/miles/cashback/whatever reasons). And there's probably grocery or other items you buy often enough that are just a buck or two each, and it's easy at most registers to split your purchase with some items with one form of payment and other items with another form of payment.

Or, use the same method to pay some utility online. I regularly pay a few bucks with one card (that needs N separate purchases in a period of time to activate some bonus) to my cell phone or internet account, then go back a few days later and pay the rest (or just some more) with another card. The typical utility won't care if a couple times a year you divide up your online payment into 11 parts (10 small for these cards, 1 bigger for the rest).

But if the PayPal thing really works for you for 5 cards, you can just apply any of those techniques to the other 5.

Ie, I find that if I do all such cards in one time period every year (I don't bother more often than once a year), then it's no big deal to it "manually", and then not have to worry about setting up automatic billing that's small in amount yet rare in frequency.

I keep all my cards in a rubber band on my desk and swap them into my wallet one at a time. When I make a small purchase I leave the card on my keyboard until the charge posts. I pay the bill and rotate the next card into my wallet.

IMO if you are only going to use a card a few times a year you are better off making random purchases.

I am almost always making a spend for a signup bonus so I keep that card(s) in my wallet for major purchases.

Do some research. You will find that you do not need to keep them open.

After 10 years, closed accounts drop off. Do some research.